Romanian dance - no practice normally needed!

Every Romanian celebration needs a Romanian dance. My wife was simply appalled in the UK at our sense of dance and our general dancing abilities as at British weddings it is incredibly popular to hire a traditional country music band and a caller to tell you what to do. In Romania it is apparently drilled into you at an early age.

Don't worry however as the dance you see at Romanian weddings require nothing more than a good few beers to loosen up the muscles as you grab hands with everyone else in the circle and dance around and around and around....

The real Romanian dance is of course more complicated than this and so it becomes part of any decent floorshow as it is beyond the audience to recall these steps.

Generally the Romanian dancing women are dressed in white with colorful embroidery and little aprons and most of the gear will be over 100 years old when great grandma had to do something with her time in the deepest, darkest, coldest Romanian winters. The daughters never seem to have followed suit. On their heads is a scarf. Most Romanian peasant women still wear these. My granny has a wonderfully creased and wrinkled up face from being out in all season - where her age-old scarf has protected her head, she looks so much younger, the skin is still smooth and white.

The men wear snazzy little waistcoats - even I own one of these, which I dust off now and again for Romanian costume days at school. The also wear white loose fitting trousers and a hat. The hat comes generally in one of four ways. There is the ridiculously small straw hat - I am sure someone put one on as he could not be bothered to make a larger one and then convinced the world that was the way forward with hats. The next is a rather snazzy black felt hat with a brim - a bit like a cowboys hat - this is the hat I wear for my costume. You can find some people wearing a sheepskin hat -which signifies you are a shepherd with now, I presume, one less sheep. The final hat - very beautiful and ornate is a hat with an outlandishly large semi-circle of peacock feathers - which makes me wonder about its origins on two fronts. The first being when and why did they add the peacock feathers? These birds cannot be described as native and so the tradition must be less strong than the other hats. Also the other hats are robust in wind and rain - I can't see a peacock feather hat offering much protection - indeed you would feel you need to carefully put your coat over it - to protect it - so get even more wet!

The Romanian dances are fun to watch - in very small doses. We had an international day at school - and I was too slow to grab the decent school camera. However I saw a Romanian holding it and thought I was safe... Sadly not. A few days after the event I got hold of the camera and found the woman had only filmed the Romanian dances done by her class - so only with almost-adults and the wealth of the fabulous dances done by the children such as from Turkey etc were all completely ignored.

The really annoying part was my friend came dressed up as a Morris dancer and because I was searching for a camera to film the event, the other teacher only filmed anything Romanian, it was lost to the world apart from a few photos - it did however look cracking.

If you go to Romanian theme restaurants, you can see and often join in the dancing. Check out the restaurant in Lipscani for the best places to eat. Can you imagine a traditional English theme pub? Whatever happened top Morris dancers? I joined a Morris dancing club - noticed a complete lack of decent looking women and left again - complete with my white hankie, beard and stick!

What do you think of Romanian dancing? Can you do it? Where did you see it?

Have you ever been to a Romanian dance?

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