A Tribute to Yves Moreau

Every individual soul chooses the significant people in that life. Destiny will place you in the particular circumstance; it will dictate that you will encounter a particular person, at a certain time, place. 

Brian Weiss

In 2012 I went to my first Yves Moreau workshop. It was located on Sylvan Lake, Hopewell Junction, New York. The workshops were held in a Jewish summer camp post season, usually in late September.  The biggest challenge was the posts that held up the building; you had to watch out for them while dancing. The camp was in a beautiful setting by a lake. I went for several years; workshops were held during early fall.   When I wasn't dancing and the weather was good I sat outside on the lake front either chatting with one of the other campers, when alone I brought a book to read.  The dinners were special because we got to eat with the teachers (the Israeli dance teacher at the time was Danny Pollock.)  The teachers would rotate with the guests and one night I was at the table with Yves and his wife France.

Yves Moreau taught some really cool dances at these workshops.  Here are some videos of the ones he taught.

Video#1 is Novo Zagorsko Horo, taught at the 2013 workshop. It was one of the dances I had on my "to learn" list.    I call it a Pravo variation with attitude.  It was not an easy dance but a lot of fun.

By the way in Bulgaria, there are two towns with Zagora in the name.  They are Nova Zagora and Stara Zagora. You won't get confused if you remember Nova means "new" and Stara means "old. "The Zagora with the Roman ruins is the old one.

The YouTube Channel "Folk Dance With Henry" has a large repertoire of international dances  Notice that Henry's dancing in a tow away zone.  He wasn't there long enough to get towed :)

 

Yves reviewed Varnenska Tropanka in 2012.  It was a dance I already knew from the Friday night folk dances. 

Video #2 is of Yves teaching Varnenska Tropanka at a workshop in Vienna back in 1996.  The video quality in those days was a bit fuzzy, but you can see Yves leading in the center.  This was probably taken with a camcorder; technology has come a long way since then because now we can take high quality videos with a cell phone.

     

A memorable dance I learned during the 2013 workshop was Vidinsko Horo. I had tried to learn it from YouTube videos, but when I went to this workshop Yves spent a good part of an afternoon teaching this dance and I finally got it.

What is really cool is that Bulgarian dance has become popular all over the world.  The dancers in Video #3 are from Japan; Balkan dance is really big over there.  They are wearing costumes as well as masks.  One looks like a black cat, the other a chipmunk (by the way, cats hunt chipmunks, so in real life they wouldn't get along, let alone dance together :)

   

 Video #5 is a dance that I learned at one of Yve's workshops: Momino Horo. This video took place in Haifa in 2014 and unlike the 1996 video it's very clear. I still have the T-shirt that he wore in the video. I bought it the year Yves retired, hardly wore it, and it's almost brand new. My group in Wethersfield had a memorial dance a few weeks ago and I wore it in his honor. 

  

Written to honor the memory of Yves Moreau, dance teacher and choreographer 1948-2003

He passed away due to primary biliary cholangitis  (non-alcoholic liver disease in layman's terms) on September 9th 2023.

If you liked this you may also enjoy:

Folklore as Destiny: Yves Moreau and Bulgarian Folk Music

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.