Quite suprising that we should be telling you about us dancing in Parnu. Why ? Well, first we do not usually dance except for our monthly session in Joelahtme, but also, Parnu is at the other side of the country. Estonia is really small of course, but still, it’s a good two hours drive to Parnu. It Just happened, that last sunday afternoon, when nothing could have suggested other plans than going back home after church, that Silja (pronounce “Celia”) mentionned about something in Parnu. She asked if we wanted to come, and as we know never to say no to experience the real estonian adventure, we agreed instantly. We could only make out that there was something “greek” going on. Our minds started imagining greek singers and dancers giving a show and people from all over the country coming to see them. Not at all, it ended up it was a dance session just like in our village, but with a little more musicians and older dancers.
We were not displeased, that we hadn’t understood right, but we were not dressed for dancing at all. We had put on polar expedition-like clothes which were not appropriate at all for dancing. It happened that a good group of our Joelahtme crew was there and the dances we knew the parnu people didn’t. Never would I have imagined Amélie and I along with Silja and other of our friends showing older estonian people from Parnu how to dance their dances. Worst, the musicians insisted that we taught the rest how to dance french dances ! What is a french dance ? The only one we could think of which would be representative and not totaly ridiculous was a breton dance. They usually go with people holding little fingers (which the estonians had a hard time believing this could be true) and Amélie and I made up something to match the music which was being played. It was a bit hilarious, but we did our best not to laugh too much, for we didn’t want our dancers to feel like they had been fooled (which they hadn’t. We found out later, that we came very close to some real breton dances! it must have been in our genes…)
anyway, we left for Parnu at 6pm, came back at midnight, with one of the musicians in the car, with whom we had a good talk. A good way to end our weekend.
