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Tradition faring fine when you can dance with a bottle of wine
Tradition faring fine when you can dance with a bottle of wine
By Lori M. Finkel
Spertus Marketing and Communications Associate
Steve Weintraub is a guy who knows how to get a party started. From family bar mitzvahs to community festivals to high-profile celebrity events, the eccentric curly-mopped, mutton-chopped Yiddish dance instructor just wants everyone to have a good time — the way it’s been done in Eastern Europe for hundreds of years.
Steve also caught the attention of Karin Bacon (Kevin Bacon’s sister), who asked him to choreograph a dance for an event. This kicked off a new found love for the style and earned him two degrees of Kevin Bacon. He was then hired as the dance instructor for the Yiddish folk arts program, KlezKamp. Since there aren't many keepers of the Yiddish dance flame left, Steve has gleaned much of his shtick (routine) from old films, modern Hasidic weddings, and the memories of his friends’ parents.
Though his interest in Yiddish dance may be more recent, Steve has always been all about dance. He started his career studying under noteworthy names like Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins and has worked with Israeli dance company Paparim Ensemble. He teaches the sher (a style of Yiddish dance) at his Build-a-Sher workshops with KlezKamp and KlezKanada in Montreal, works as the dance leader with Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, and can be found at just about every place the term klezmer (a musical style characteristic of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe) appears.
Steve has revived and breathed new life into a style of dance and a part of Jewish history and culture that was nearly lost. Just don’t call him a revivalist. “I’m a continuist,” he says.
Accompanied by his friends from the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, Steve will be teaching the famous bottle dance as well as other Yiddish dances on June 10 in the Spertus tent at the Greater Chicago Jewish Festival.
In advance of the Festival, Steve and I met at the Chicago Cultural Center to talk about Yiddish dance.
What makes Yiddish dance unique from other European dances popular at the time, and what kinds of movements define the style?
There is an English and Eastern European element to it. You’ll see a little minuet in them, but the energy is softer, the chest and face are lifted. The line of the body, it’s a little broken. There’s a certain bend at the wrist. Footwork is not important, it’s about what’s happening from the waist up, the paths you make in the space. It’s the humor in the dance. It’s about the gestures, the faces.
What are the faces like?
The expressions are always proud, glowing. There’s a radiance in the cheeks.
Where does humor come in?
The dancers look like they’re putting on airs but there’s a sense of a self-awareness about it, a self-mocking. There’s a good amount of playful ribbing that goes on, not unlike the insults used by comedian Don Rickles. There’s one song in particular that gives calls like you’d hear at a square dance, and it calls out something like “Malka, move to the wall. Rivka, you the other way. Malka, you went the wrong way and screwed up the dance!” It’s the kind of good-natured ribbing that you can only do with people you like.
Yiddish dance in general is very joyful. Well, all but one — the Broyges Tans. It was usually performed between two mothers-in-law or a man and a woman. There’s a fake argument, and then the two make up. The making up part is very important. This dance used to be performed at weddings. It was good for newlywed couples to see this, because it provided a strengthening in the relationship, to know that there can be an argument but that it’s going to be OK.
What is Jewish about this style of dance?
Like in Judaism, facing people is very important. In Judaism you face things to give them the proper respect. You back away from the Kotel (Western Wall), never turning your face away. During a service, you stand up and face the Torah. The same respect is given in this type of dance. Also, it’s very showy. The Flash Tans, like the bottle dance, is all about showing off. Balancing and juggling go all the way back to the Talmud. Several Talmudic rabbis would do things like juggle fire and dance with branches.
When I was preparing to meet you, my colleagues had a question: How realistic is the bottle dance scene in Fiddler on the Roof?
It’s pretty realistic. [The Broadway show’s choreographer] Jerome Robbins really studied hard. He went around to weddings in New York, pulled from old films. He would definitely be considered a first-wave Yiddish dance revivalist. However, the shtetl in Fiddler on the Roof is a bit of a fairy tale. The real story is that life was much more nuanced. It was more suburban that shtetl, more about keeping up with the Joneses.
Is Yiddish dance being taught in dance schools?
Unfortunately, no. There are few people out there who know how to do it.
Why is it important to continue this type of dance?
If you can do this at a party, it’s like bringing a gift. Like dancing in front of the bride at a wedding — It’s not just something you do for joy, it fulfills a mitzvah. So it’s just something you must do.
Join Steve Weintraub and Spertus at the Spertus tent for bottle and Yiddish partner dancing, June 10 at the Greater Chicago Jewish Festival.
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