This is week 60 of our virtual adventures!

Time: Friday 08:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada) every week, until we return home to LA Dancefit!
Contact Sherry for the Zoom link at moc.liamg@1ecnadlroW

***On May 14th, 2021, and reviewing on May 21st, we are happy to bring you, live from the Netherlands (at 5am), the return of Jaap Leegwater with a different set of dances from his recent workshops for us. Jaap is known worldwide for his fun teaching and having introduced dances including Karamfil, Dobrudžanska Pandela, and Mari Marijko. He began his dance career in the Netherlands, where he earned one of his degrees in international folk dance, specializing in Bulgarian folk dance and choreography. Jaap studied at the State Choreographer’s school in Sofia and Plovdiv, living there for two years; he regularly returns to Bulgaria to update his studies and make new recordings.

Accompanying Jaap will be master accordionist Jan Wollring, the regular accompanist of Bulgarian singer Galina Durmushliyska during the years she lived in the Netherlands.

Sherry Cochran, Joan Hantman, and Tom Bozigian and Sheree King will be on hand for this special evening. We will open the doors at 7:45pm with warmup dances. Jaap will start just after 8pm and teach for most of the evening.

Jaap will make his music available to us after the workshop by a similar mechanism as before, by request for a $15 donation to L.I.F.E. He has insisted that we keep $5 of each donation.
Steve Kotansky has gifted us his workshop music to make available to anyone who donates to L.I.F.E. and requests his music.
Fusae Carroll has made the Atanas Kolarovski dance music for her workshop available for a $15 donation to L.I.F.E. that we will forward to Atanas.
These generous teachers all want to make sure we can continue to fund guest teacher workshops!

Tom & Sheree have made available a Digital Download of the Daronee Suite of 6 parts (with vocals by the original Armenian State Song & Dance Ensemble) that he recorded live in the fall of 1974. There is also a newer recording of Daronee (no singing) on Songs and Dances of the Armenian People Vol. 5. They recently made Harsaneek and the Lebanese dances we love available for individual download. They have been teaching from Vol.1 “The Best of Tom Bozigian” (35 dances) and will be soon including dances from other volumes, all available at bozigian.com.

Our weekly sessions remain free, but we very much appreciate it if you have a desire and ability to contribute. Your donations go towards funding special master teacher workshops ($10-15 suggested) and here is how you can donate:
PayPal acct to moc.liamg@7111anaho; Venmo @Beryl-Oshiro; please contact Sherry at moc.liamg@1ecnadlroW for assistance if you prefer to send a check.

UPCOMING SCHEDULE:

  • Jaap Leegwater will return for a workshop with a different set of dances on May 14th and a review on May 21st.
  • Ahmet Lüleci will do a workshop for us in June, tentatively June 18th. We have asked him to quick-teach and dance as many recent hits as possible.
  • Tom & Sheree may do some mini-classes every couple of weeks.
  • Ercument Kilic and many surprises intermingled with all-request nights with our house crew.

Lots of fun stuff always! Hope to see you often!

We are grateful that we are able to continue to bring you great dancing and instruction as we continue self-isolation. Be sure to review the teaching videos and other fun stuff (including a Dick Crum video, videos of Jaap and other master teachers, and lots more) on the Life Balkan Dancers YouTube channel at:
youtube.com/user/LifeBalkanDancers/videos

Request Zoom link at moc.liamg@1ecnadlroW