Sunday, August 16, 2015

Entertaining

I spent last night at the dance part of the local three day festival.  It was a good night with lots of dancing, laughing and chatting.  There were two to three guys there who loved exaggerating certain motions that had everyone laughing.

Drum, Instrument, Loud, Music, SoundPicture a large embroidery hoop that is about 1.5 to 2 feet across attached to a handle with either skin or material stretched across and tight enough to make sounds.  They use a small long stick to hit the drum.  The music is a combination of the drums and voice.

I would love to tell you what some of the songs are on but I don't know enough of the language to understand.  The last time I went by motions alone, I thought the song was about picking up children and putting them over your shoulders.  Instead it turned out to be about heaving meat up over your shoulder to carry. 

Girl, Eskimo, Female, Young, ArcticThe way it works is that the local hosting group dances first the first night, in the middle, the second night and last the third night.  Last night the first group got up to dance.  They have a character who loves to comic dance.  He drummed until part way through the dance, put his drum down and then snuck into the line of ladies dancing.  Usually men kneel on the floor in front of the women but he danced standing up with the women.

He exaggerated the moves and at one point was speaking gibberish to whatever they were supposed to be looking at.  On the second time through, the women slowly left and let him have fun.  The third time through, one of the guys from the audience came and we had dueling dancers.  By this point, everyone was on the floor laughing.

Later on in the evening, one of the groups had a stick with birds and other things on it.  A person holds it and bounces it while strolling around teasing people with it.  The guy from earlier got a hold of it and was having fun making people laugh, then the second guy came up with a broom, challenging him to something.  What I'm not sure.

At this point, I headed home because my ribs were sore from all that laughing.  Ohhhh my!  It was such a good night.

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