Tapping Veins

I have, at last, leapt into the folk dance and music scene of Hobart.  And what a scene it is!  This past Saturday (still in the throes of tonsillitis) I ventured to 58 Melville St with Ian and Kat for a FolkFedTas (Folk Federation of Tasmania) folk dance.  It was billeted as a collection of different styles, from Balkan folk and English folk to American contra and Irish steps, which meant that I got to jive in over a dozen new dances for over three and a half hours!  Incredible people, a bunch of gleaming smiles attached to swirling legs--incredibly interesting, from all over the world and eager to meet anyone.  It took mere moments to make friends.
Nonesuch, the band, was nothing short of beautiful (the bouzouki player was incredible; kept the band real tight with his rhythms while looking like a reformed psychedelic Abe Lincoln).  They specialize in Balkan music, so we got to hear a ton of that stuff.  Real lingering, phantasmal sounds.  The dances, though, were simple circle dances with a basic stepping pattern.  The highlight of the evening's dances (excepting the contra, which was intensely fun to get back into after over a month and a half's absence) was the English folk dance, Nonesuch.  It was written for king Henry VIII's "grandest hunting mansion in Britain," Nonesuch.  This is a rather convoluted dance that took, all things considered, almost twenty five minutes to do.  The song, Nonesuch, which the band (also Nonesuch) performed, was a scarecrow of a number: haunting, lilting, like dripping fog at close of day.  I strongly encourage you to try it out, if you can find a band to play the song, a caller to know how to call it, and enough folks to dance it (at least eight).
The day after, we met up with the same folks in a tiny, ancient rec center / church.  There, Ian and I got to play with the band for two hours while Becca learned some cool steps in some of the dances.  Dave and Cathy (who are the Hobart equivalents of Conway and Pops Saylor for you Charleston folks) offered to snag a copy of Hobart's popular folk tunes (an actual printed document) for Ian and myself.
This Thursday is Danceaholics Unanimous, a casual gathering of local dancers who want to check out new things, hone techniques, find / present new musics etc.
I am fresh and thick in the vein of folk now, up to my elbows.