NATÉRCIA LAMEIRO

Background in Folk Dance

Since 2006 that I have been attending Andanças Folk Dance and Musical Festival. It was there were I started my interest in world's dance and music. After that, and while I was growing up, I started going to other festivals like Fest-i-ball, Folkarria, Roda a Saia, Raiz da Aldeia, Festival Passagem do Ano, and many other balls. During this period until today, I have been attending many different workshops about world's tradicional dance with a lot of different teachers and also from different countries. One of them Matias, who I considered my special teacher and tutor on this field. If you want, you can check up his work and his project about folk dance and music in http://www.tradballs.pt 

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The classes and the method

In 2017, I decided to propose Folk classes in the dance school were I grow up and I still call it home, Escola de dança Clara leão. 

The objective of the classes since then, more than just teaching the choreographies from the dances and countries, it's creating independent, sensitive and creative dancers. Starting with listening exercises and working more our sensibility to the music. I use to say that if our hears don't understand the music the feet won't too. Growing up also surrounded by so many different styles of dance and different working process also helped me to develop more skills that I actually apllied to the Folk Classes. One of the most important ones was contact of improvisation. One of the keys to improvise with a partner is the connection that we establish between us. That connection it's also an important tool to folk dance. Specially in pair dances. In order to communicate a movement to our partner we need to be able to use our body language. It doesn't matter if it is in the most convencional way with our hands or with the head or our knees. As long as we are understood by the other dancer everything is valid. 

About communicating and creating new things, another tool that we try to work on, it's the improvisation. Starting decomposing a certain dance and understanding the dynamic until creating variations for it and, in the best ultimate step, to be able to create at the moment, improvise. Of course this topic it's not for a first year dancer neither a second. But, it helps the ones with more experience to improve. 

Another thing that we try to work a lot is the identity of the dancer, of the pair and of the group. Folk dances can be danced in many different dispositions. In lines, chains, circles, pairs, groups of four, six, eight, etc. Every time we change a format or a pair we need to create a knew identity. And what is this thing that I call Identity. Well, first of all, we are all different from each others. We all have our own and unique personality. In cases of dances like madison or even macarena we can express that same way of being. However, when we need to dance with other person, I talk about the cases for exemple of pair dances like schottisches or waltzs, everything changes. Now we aren't dancing alone and with one personality but with two. And some times a very different one. In this cases we need to creat a new identity. Something in the middle of my own way and my partner's way of dancing. For understanding a little bit better I will give and example; One ball, I was invited to dance with a guy that I've never danced before. I said yes to him and the music started. It was a waltz. Well, there's nothing more simple then a waltz, I thought, but yet that man couldn't get one step right. I started to get frustrated with that dance and also him. Althougth I could see that he was really trying his best and following me, we couldn't dance anything alike a waltz. At a certain point I realize something: I was dancing alone, with only my personality. I was trying to force that man to dance in the way that I knew, that it was "right", in a way that I wanted. I started to listening more my partner. Trying to understand who was he, what was is own way of dancing that music. And little by little I started to listening more, he started to lose is fear and, at the end, we were totally connected. Now you ask me, "But did you really danced a waltz?". No. Nothing even similar. But, we dance with our new identity. We dance not afraid and enjoying ourselves.This is the key to avoid our partner or even ourselves to feel wrong, lost or ashamed. Why dancing with this burden and feeling like the most two left feet person in the world when we can actually enjoy it? Like in life, if we work in team, we can't always be the speaker and the person in the lead. Even if we know that we are better. We must share and be open to the rest of the group. To our partner. This is an essential tool to respect the others while dancing, to search for new ways of dancing, thinking and feeling the music, and also the tool that helps us feeling more part of the dance. 

One of the things that actually made me find a process of teaching like this was because the more I dance, the more dancers I found, less creative they were. They counted all the steps at my ear. They got upset when I went just a little bit of the choreography to create something different. They were afraid of making mistakes. I even found dancers that instead of communicating with their body used their voices to tell me "Now I go front. Now you are going to spin"... All this ways of seeing dance made me rethink of why were people so afraid of getting out of the box out of the rules. I was tired of dancing always in the same way. I didn't want to disrespect their way of dancing because is as valid as any other but I was tired of the same things, the same variations, the same steps. So, in other to at least showing a different side of folk dance, I propose the classes.

After one year in a ballet school teaching folk dance I realized that for this type of dance and tradition would be more organic and close to the folklore format to do the classes in some space more informal and closer to a more intimistic mood. I felt that I was teaching tradicional dances in a art's school instead being teaching for exemple in a public salon or a personal house. So I decided to change a little bit the format and place and started a new project on my own with the suporte of the company were I work (MUSICALMENTE). There, I created a more informal classe plan with also regular life music. It's very important to have more life music instead of recording and because of that I started to produce balls with folk groups were my students and others could practice and apply what they've learn in the classes. And, above all, to enjoy themselves through dance and music.

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