OLENDER

Unfamiliar with dance cue terminology? Learn more here.

LS E-11, Side A, Track 2.

Polish Folk Dance

Formation: Double circle, partners facing, boy's back to center. Inside (boy's R, girl's L) hands joined. Begin each figure with boy's L foot, girl's right foot.

DANCE

Measures (2 counts per meas.; i.e., 1 = 2 counts)

1 Raising (or flipping) outside arm diagonally over head, elbow slightly rounded, wrist loose, do a stamp with outside foot (count 1), bend the elbow (count 2);

2 Repeat the stamp (same foot), with the arm raised, bend the elbow;

3- 4 Join both hands with partner and turn once around, CW;

5- 6 Repeat the action of Meas. l and 2;

7- 8 Girl: with 4 steps move in LOD to the boy in front of you. Boy: reach back with your right hand to take the left hand of the new girl coming to you.

9-16 Repeat the entire dance from the beginning: two stamps; two-hand turn; two stamps; girl moves forward.

Repeat the pattern of the dance six more times (8 times in all).

Note: Olender is a dance from the region of Kurpie in northeast Poland. There exist several ways of dancing it, depending on the locality and/or age group. Olender is played on the LSF record by an old, well-known musician, Josef Mroz, who uses a very unusual instrument popular in Kurpie, a pedal accordion, into which the player, who sits on a chair, pumps air through a pipe by means of two pedals. Mr. Mroz is accompanied by Josef Sobiech, who plays a fiddle and Jan Kaminski, who plays a special Kurpie tambourine, called "bebenek" (a small drum).

Music and instructions courtesy Ada Dziewanowska, Milwaukee, Wisconsin