Saturday, August 5, 2017

Dance Name Malapropisms

It's a proven fact that capital punishment is a known detergent against crime.
Archie Bunker

Archie Bunker was famous for his malapropisms. He was a fictional character in the show All in the Family. The show was so popular that it ran for eight seasons: 1971-1979.

The word "malapropism" originated from a character, Mrs. Malaprop, who often confused words that sounded similar (see quote above).

Sometimes, at dance, we intentionally (or unintentionally) mispronounce the names of dances.  The names have stuck and everyone knows which one we mean.

Video #1 is a folk dance from the Dobrogea region of Romania.  One of my friends calls it Dragon Dance.  Its real name is Dragaicuta.  The notes describe it as a "women's dance, done by friends of the bride, to mourn the loss of her in marriage."



I came up the name Rusty Nail for Rustemul because I practice dance in my basement.   I stepped on a rusty nail while doing Rustemul and the name stuck.  Fortunately the nail was lying on the floor so I wasn't hurt.  It was an annoyance more than anything else. Now I use the Shop Vac on the basement rug before dancing. It is my husband's work space and he fools around with tools and hardware when I'm not there.

Which region of Romania is this from?  The notes I found mentioned Muntenia, but the title on the video is "Rustemul din Oltenia." Both Muntenia and Oltenia are in southern Romania.



The name Nebesko Kolo sounds a lot like a popular brand of cookies here in the States (Nabisco). Nebesko means heavenly in Serbian and some people think Nabisco makes heavenly cookies.  Their most popular brand is the Oreo, which has many different varieties as you can see in this taste test video:



Back to Nebesko (Nabisco) Kolo.  We use different music for this dance, but the same choreography.

I'm not sure if this dance is from Serbia or Croatia, although I know there is a region in Serbia where tamburitza music is popular. The notes mention a country, Yugoslavia, that no longer exists. It broke up in 1991.



Horror From Veche is actually a souped-up version of Hora Veche an old dance for young people :) This group is fun to watch.  Listen carefully to what they say when they're dancing, it's quite funny. Too bad the video isn't closed captioned.

The goal here is not perfection, but fun.



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1 comment:

  1. "I'm not sure if this dance is from Serbia or Croatia, although I know there is a region in Serbia where tamburitza music is popular"

    Well Serbs had big ties with tamburitza music in the past. Many of the well-known tamburitza songs were composed by Serbs and based on the words of Serb poets, such as Milorad Petrovic, who was born in central Serbia - not even Vojvodina.
    The most known tamburitza family in the U.S. were the Popovitch Brothers who were Serbs from Lika (which is now Croatia but was part of Austro-Hungarian when their immigrant parents were born). There were two documentaries done on them.

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