Hello all. I've seen a few references to dance in the months that I've been here, but not a survey thread.

So... what kind of dance do you do?

I take classes in Irish solo dancing and Irish ceilidh dancing, and also very much enjoy contra dances and randomly bopping around to fiddle tunes.

I have also dabbled in Hungarian dance, Scottish country dance, North American square dance, and Cape Breton stepdance.

The ones that I've tried but haven't liked are belly dancing and English country dancing.

I also have some general questions about your attitudes to dance, in case anybody wants to discuss it...

In the "what instruments do you play?" thread several people said "voice" which took me by surprise, because I would never have thought to add voice to my list. But it does make sense to call voice an instrument when I think about it.

Would anyone add their shoes to their list of instruments? If anyone asked you what kind of music you like to make, would you think to mention your favourite dances?

Is the music you like to play the same as the music you like to dance to? Or is there a dichotomy?

If you consider your dancing to be integrated with your music-making, do you consider it to be folk music? Has anyone formulated a definition of what they consider to be a folk dance?

If contra dance, for example, is a folk dance, is the macarena? Or Irish solo dancing done as a performance rather than a participatory event? Or randomly bopping around to the old fiddle tunes?

Just dreaming of getting a thread of mine included in the "Threads about defining folk music" thread,

Marion