Folk & Historical Dance Troupe

05/31/2021

Missed today's live screening of Waltz Nights? No problem! You can watch the compilation of beautiful waltzes choreographed by Betchen on our YouTube channel!

Thanks for a wonderful day two of the Reunion! We are so excited to see you all again tomorrow to wrap up our 50 year celebration.

Enjoy this compilation of original waltzes performed by the Troupe at our Waltz Nights throughout the years! Choreography by Professor Betchen Barber of Occi...

05/30/2021

Hello Folk friends!
Thank you for such a wonderful first day of the Reunion yesterday. We can't wait to see you all again today!

You can join all of today's sessions using the same Zoom link as yesterday. If you're not on our email list and are an alumnus of the Troupe, send us an email with your name and years active and we'll forward you the information!

05/23/2021

Missed Friday's Dance Community Showcase, hosted by the Occidental Dance Team, Azucar, and the Folk & Historical Dance Troupe? No worries! You can watch the full performance on Oxy's YouTube channel for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjArYqi8X_o

Help support our clubs with a donation through our shared GiveCampus: https://www.givecampus.com/schools/AssociatedStudentsofOccidentalCollege/support-dance-at-oxy

Join me and make a gift to support dance at Oxy!

05/16/2021

Happy Sunday, Troupe!!

Today is a very special day because our dear friend and beloved Troupe member, Madison Taggart, is graduating from Occidental College. Congratulations, Madison Oxy Class of 2021!!!
Madison will be receiving her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Sociology at Commencement today. We are so excited to celebrate with you in L.A. and all over the world!!

There are not enough words to describe Madison’s curiosity and commitment to her passions. She has dedicated countless hours to learning and perfecting traditional Troupe dances and choreographies. Madison has performed in Waltz Nights, Contra Dances, Oktoberfests, and more with the Troupe. Beyond a constant member of the Troupe since her sophomore year, Madison excelled at her courses at Oxy, in her study abroad program in Rwanda, and interning at the United Nations during the complex challenges of the pandemic. And we could go on and on!

You indeed are amazing at every pursuit you take on!

Madison's love for language learning is contagious and has allowed international students to find a home at Oxy. Gracias por tu carino y compania querida Madison! Extranamos tanto nuestras largas charlas. Las esperamos con tantas ansias. Estamos seguros que nuestra amistad durara por mucho! Wir lieben dich!

Madison’s optimism and support are incomparable. She is always willing to go the extra mile if her friends need her wise advice, caring language instruction, or a night of twirling! A lunch or dinner with Madison is rarely shorter than three hours; time flies by during comfortable conversation with her. She is a thoughtful and dedicated friend and we will miss long rehearsals and late nights with her.

We wish you lots of adventures and dancing as you continue discovering the world. Remember that we will always be there for you for another hug, choreography, and laughing together!

05/14/2021

💃🏻🕺🏻COME OUT AND SUPPORT OXY’S SMALL DANCE CLUBS!!!💃🏻🕺🏻Hosted by Occidental Dance Team, Azucar, & Folk and Historical Troupe, the Virtual Dance Showcase on Friday May 21st, 2021 PDT will be accessible through Occidental College’s YouTube & feature fully remote pieces that the teams have been working on this past semester. Watch us perform some of your favorite Troupe dances before catching up at the 50th anniversary reunion the following week!

05/03/2021

What’s better than reading Fairy Tales? Performing them! Here a short description and history of The Frog Princess in the Folk and Historical Dance Troupe.

When a king orders his three sons to find brides by each shooting an arrow: they must marry whoever brings it back. The arrow of the youngest, Ivan, is retrieved by a frog—but he is forced to marry her anyway!!
As the candidates bring the arrows, the king sets trials for the three brides to test their worth, but the frog turns into a girl at night to fulfill the tasks and always does the best. The last command is to dance for the king. The Frog turns up at court arrayed as the most magnificent princess ever seen, outlasting the other dancers and then going magical. Letting down tremendously long sleeves, she waves them as she dances, creating illusions of lakes with swans swimming on them.
Completely in love, Ivan sneaks back home, finds her frogskin, and burns it so she will have to stay human. When she learns this, horrified, she says that now spirits will take her away and he must try to find her. Thus begins his trial, through hosts of witches and demons, until he finally wins her back.

This traditional story depicts the old Slavic tradition of bride-testing dances that determined if the girl is strong enough to do farm work. Troupe co-founder and current leader, Betchen Barber, studied ancient languages, traditions, and costumes and shared a deeper understanding of the story. “The great 19th-century Russian folklorist Afanasiev collected three versions of The Frog Princess. In Slavic tradition, each bride and groom represent in glorified form the central reproductive forces of nature, male and female, and the wedding songs sung at each little stage of the process—which took weeks—are replete with this imagery.” If you wish to learn more about this and other traditional stories, their cultural background, and symbolism, we recommend you to read Betchen’s book The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance (2013).

In 1991, Betchen and Nastya Snyder, a senior Russian major, engaged in a profound research project to develop the performance of The Frog Princess. These efforts included looking through volumes of Russian wedding songs, figuring out their symbolism, and the particular costumes (with unique sleeves and bracelets that held them up). The pair also painted the scenery and created the frog’s blouse with 4-foot-long sleeves. Betchen highlighted the challenges that Terri Emmons underwent as the Frog, the difficulty of “transforming” constantly from dancer to toad, creating a beautiful and useful costume, and catching the eye of the audience. The show premiered three years in succession: a trial performance (for families only) in Thorne in 1992 (to help figure out what it needed), then the polished show in Keck the next two years.

The story and memories of The Frog Princess remain a big part of the traditional Fairy Tales that the Troupe performed for over a decade. If you wish to hear more about the anecdotes of this show and watch it together, be on the lookout for our online Alumni Reunion next Memorial Weekend (May 29 to May 31). We will live stream The Frog Princess and have many surprises throughout the weekend. More info coming out soon!

04/12/2021

Happy Monday!
Come watch Troupe Co-Presidents Alejo Maggini and Alana Pizarro present their original choreography at Oxy’s virtual Dance Production! Alejo and Alana have created a unique piece that fuses the styles of dance they are trained in, Argentinian Folklore and Ballet (respectively). “Ballet Folklorico: Moving Up” depicts an arduous journey of self-discovery and reconnection with our hearts through personal and community reflection.

Interested? Visit Dance Pro’s website and fill out the Ticket Order Form to attend: https://oxydancepro.com/buy-tickets-1. Shows are this Friday, April 16 at 6pm (PST) and Saturday, April 17 at 12pm (PST). General admission tickets are $9. The show features ten original pieces (choreographed, performed, and edited by current Oxy undergraduates) in various dance styles like Contemporary, Tap, Jazz, Hip Hop, and (of course) Ballet Folklorico! We hope to see you there!

04/07/2021

Hi everyone! Russian dances have been in the Troupe since its origins in 1971 when Betchen Barber, Gil Alkire, Laurel Gray, and Betty Schnur got together to dance historical pieces.
Arguably the first style the Troupe decided to undertake, Betchen remembers that “when Gil and Prof. Larry Caldwell (in Political Science) organized a two-term course called The Russian Experience, Gil asked the Troupe to work up and put on a 45-minute program of Russian and Ukrainian dances for that class, which we then did each year for many years, sewing an extensive array of costumes for ourselves.”

Some of the first dances included “contest dances” such as Kamarinskaja and Polyanka which would be followed later by couple dances— Kohanochka, Korobushka, and the kamikaze-style Karapyet. Also, Betchen notes that she and Gil choreographed a version of Vo Sadu “In the Orchard” to her father’s recording from the 1930s of the great Russian bass-baritone, Alexander Kipnis, singing it. This choreography remodeled the “work-motion” folk dance slightly so as to tell visually the story told in the song—the first of many “fairytales in dance” that the Troupe would eventually perform. The performance portrayed a young man, pursuing a girl who is picking apples, offers her silks, satins, and other riches to marry him. She keeps refusing, but finally says that if he’s really serious, he should offer her a gold wedding ring for her finger! Kipnis’s recording is called Kolechko “The Little Ring”.

We usually began our programs with a stately women’s khorovod (“follow the leader”), with everyone moving slowly in unison, choreographing it to a song with an interesting history (a smuggled Soviet recording). Because until recently men and women did not dance together, the khorovod and the contest dance (lines of men and women facing and trading steps) are the most archaic types, along with the rigorous bride-testing dance. In this dance, the female partner spins 32 times, then he leaps 20 times, then she, and then he, and so on.

Betchen recalls that Russian dances invited the audience to engage with the Troupe “At the end of our “newly” imported (19th-century) waltz, Alexandrovska, we ordered the student audience onto the dance floor and taught them the energetic Troika (“Three-Horse Sleigh”), a progressive dance for a guy between two girls. That woke ‘em up! And often one or two of the guys would find it such fun that they would join the Troupe. Win/win!”

Russian dances have been a crucial part of the Troupe’s history and until today we practice them, hoping for a performance soon! If you enjoyed this piece or remember dancing to one of our Russian pieces send us your pictures and comments to [email protected]

03/26/2021

Today we’d like to take the time and space to celebrate our beloved Co-President, the incomparable Alejo Maggini, on his birthday! Alejo is a third year Diplomacy & World Affairs and Economics double major and is pursuing a double minor in Education and Linguistics. He has been Co-President of the F&H Dance Troupe for a year and is devoted to his role. His passion for dance is unrivaled - he has extensive training in Argentinian Folklore and has shared this knowledge with the Troupe and with the Oxy community by choreographing for Dance Production two years in a row. Check out the link below to learn a little bit about his choreography experience last year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFPXmnQ8L0k&ab_channel=OccidentalCollege%27sDanceProduction

“I love working with Alejo,” Betchen writes. “He is knowledgeable, sensible, and clever, and also very upbeat, so he is easy and fun to work with. I always feel we are moving forward.” Alejo has a talent for language. Betchen recalls feeling “amazed and delighted when Alejo started learning the words to the songs of the Romanian dances we were doing. In fact, now when the 4 of us die-hards are dancing alone, with masks, in my garden, I miss hearing his fine voice belting them out!” His training in Folklore has uniquely prepared him to quickly learn choreography and perform Troupe numbers with grace and ease. “On my 80th birthday he sent me a video of the two of us waltzing together towards the end of Waltz Night, and it looked as effortless as it had felt! It’s always a joy to me to realize that I’ve helped add the enormous pleasure of waltzing to someone’s life.” Alejo has even taken it upon himself to learn both the “lead” and “follow” roles of the traditional Waltz couple, much to the enjoyment of many of his dance partners. We all recognize the incredible commitment to his COMMUNITY Alejo has made and feel confident he’ll go far. Betchen wonders “if I’ll be saying in 20 years, ‘I knew that famous man when he was a student!’”

Fellow Troupe member and Oxy senior Madison writes: “Alejo! I am so grateful to have you as a friend. You are such a kind, warm, smart, dynamic person. I love that we share so many interests and passions and I deeply miss our long, involved conversations about theory at random times and places on campus, whether it be arguing about economics and sociology or debating horizontalism. I am always impressed about how involved and dedicated you are to the many communities you inhabit, including the many things you are involved in at oxy and how you bring your all to each and every one of those things. I enjoyed being your dance partner and miss dancing with you. Despite its challenges, I'm so glad that we got a chance to work together in the task force and I hope we get more chances to work together in the future. I hope we can see each other again in person soon.”

Alejo - we love, miss, and appreciate you so much. Working and dancing with you is the most wonderful pleasure and only brings us joy and happiness. You are the kindest, most gracious, hardworking soul and we can’t wait for the day that we are reunited in dancing together. Here’s to continuing dancing, choreographing, creating, venting, and wasting all of our time talking together. Hope you are having the happiest of birthdays at home with your family. Much, much love.