So, You Think You Can Dance?
by Christina Kaminski

There will be tango, tap, mambo, hip hop, bellydance, contradance, dancing for athletes, dancing for daddies, dancing for dancers, and dancing for anyone who has ever whiled away an entire wedding reception by sweating nervously at the table closest to the dance floor—sound like you? For the past 30 years, acoustic folk duo Jay Ungar and Molly Mason have been teaching and celebrating American folk music and dance with their Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps in the Catskills. For one week during each of the summer months, Ungar and Mason are joined by about 150 music-and dance-loving folk enthusiasts of all ages, who come (or, in many cases, return once again) to brush up their swing, waltz, square and contradance, English country dance, Cajun and Zydeco dance, or clogdancing style. Each of the retreats begin with a dinner and dance event (which is open to the public). A beginners workshop—a crash course—is provided for free before the real fun starts.

Although the camp season winds down at the end of summer, on Labor Day weekend, the Catskill Mountain Eco-Heritage Festival will feature two full evenings of Ashokan-style square and contradancing with Jay & Molly at the Ashokan Center. And to keep dancers warm through the colder months, the Ashokan Fiddle & Dance website also hosts a mid-Hudson dance calendar highlighting folk-dance gatherings of all kinds in Kingston, Woodstock, Hurley, and other areas nearby.

Latin dance is thriving locally, too. Carlos Osorio, instructor and founder of the Cumbia Spirit School of Dance, will be offering one-day Latin dance workshops, in addition to regular classes, at his Woodstock studio this autumn. Osorio uses cumbia—a popular style of dance combining elements of African, Spanish, and native Colombian dances—as a platform for teaching other Latin styles, like salsa, vallenato, or merengue. “Cumbia is a very relaxing social dance,” he says, “it’s very simple, when you’re first learning.” The movements of the dance are not as complex or technical as other Latin styles, “but people love it when they see it.” At his cumbia workshop in September, Osorio will teach both a folkloric version of the dance (performed by a group, in a circle) and a modern version, for couples. The samba and mambo workshops, in October and November, apply cumbia as a warm-up technique, building upon a foundation of following simple instructions and moving with the beat. “Cumbia allows people to relax, and it keeps them from thinking too much, so they can enjoy the rhythm and the music,” Osorio says, “for me, that’s what Latin dance is all about: enjoying the music.” Every three months, he hosts a potluck dinner and dance at Cumbia Spirit, providing an apt setting for a dance whose name also means “celebration.”

This fall, after a summer-long hibernation, Bon and Zhanna Provenzano and Carina Moeller of Tango Argentino are bringing the basic tango series (for aspiring tangueros and tangueras) back to the Living Seed Yoga Center in New Paltz and the Sadhana Center for Yoga and Meditation in Hudson. Owing to the amount of technique in the dance, tango classes tend to be more serious than others, and Tango Argentino’s use of yoga studios is perhaps appropriate to their classroom atmosphere—one of calm concentration and appreciation of the art. Beginning students learn the techniques they’ll need to be able to improvise with freedom (and with anyone), because, at a milonga, that’s what tango is all about. Tango, too, is a social dance. Bon Provenzano explains, “An evening at a milonga is divided up into tandas (short sets of music of a particular style), and when each tanda ends, you typically walk away from your partner and find somebody else to dance with for the next tanda. To help someone get used to dancing with many different people with many different styles, we constantly rotate partners during the class. So, even if you do come with your own partner, chances are you won’t be dancing with that person much.” He adds that helping his students reach the point where they are comfortable and confident dancing with others in close embrace is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching tango.

In Saugerties, New World Home Cooking hosts weekly milongas with Tango DJ and founder of Tango Woodstock Ilene Marder; and Café Mezzaluna offers evenings of Latin dance, including sessions led by Carlos Osorio. Both restaurants also frequently feature a variety of American folk music/dance events.

On the other hand, your neighbors might be learning how to pop, lock, and drop it. At Dream Studio Dance in Rhinebeck, hip hop and jazz dance are the most popular courses in the new adult program. The studio also offers classes that use dance as a type of cross-training, such as “dancing for athletes” and a fitness boot camp. Instructor and founder Lara Ganz notes that adults tend to encounter more obstacles when it comes to learning how to dance in a classroom setting. “We get discouraged a lot easier than kids,” she says. “Kids are more resilient in that fashion. But we’re trying to create a program where people feel like they can come, learn to dance, and not be too overwhelmed with the kind of self-consciousness that comes along with not having learned to dance as a young person.” When Dream Studio hosts bring-your-parent-to-class days, adults who do the class with their children sometimes surprise themselves with what they’re capable of. “The parents really enjoy it,” says Ganz, “and the kids get to giggle at mom and dad. It’s a lot of fun for everybody.”

At the Rhinebeck Dance Centre in Red Hook, Michele Ribble knows all about the hidden desires of reluctant-seeming adult dancers, after having taught them for 27 years. When they register for classes, she says, “a lot of them are like, ‘What do you mean, costume deposit’”? And I say, ‘You’re going to perform.’ ‘I’m going to? No…’ They’re angry at first, but secretly, I think they’re excited about it. Of course, we do twist their arms a little bit, but then they absolutely go for it.” The studio provides instruction in a wide variety of styles (including ballroom and wedding dance) but tap, ballet, and belly dancing are the most popular adult classes there. The real treat, however, is for the tap dancers. The dance floor in the main studio—which Ribble moved, piece by piece, from a previous location—is special. “It’s like tap dancing on the top of a drum, just as if your feet were the sticks,” she says. To fully appreciate the originally designed, double-sprung, American Tap Dance Foundation standard floor at the Rhinebeck Dance Centre, you perhaps had to be at Ribble’s first studio, on the second floor of the Rhinebeck building that still houses Starr Place, where a small group of dancers rattled the restaurant’s ceilings until the chandelier came down (thankfully, not during business hours). Needless to say, the instructors at Rhinebeck Dance make the most of the three studios in their distinctive building on Broadway.

At the end of My Best Friend’s Wedding, George—played by Rupert Everett—makes a memorable promise I’d like to borrow. He says, “Maybe there won’t be marriage. Maybe there won’t be sex. But by God, there will be dancing!” Well, maybe there won’t be so much leaf-peeping. Maybe there won’t be too many pumpkins. But by God, there will be dancing in the Hudson Valley this fall.

Web Links to the Dance

www.ashokan.org

www.cumbiaspirit.com

www.tangonewpaltz.com

www.dreamstudiollc.com

www.rhinebeckdance.com