World Dance Workshops with Lee Otterholt September 2025
We were treated to a smorgasbord of beautiful dances with lovely music from a variety of countries ranging from Albania, to Serbia, Bosnia, Moldova, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Norway. Lee’s style of teaching was gently intense, with an emphasis on style, body movement and footwork. From the comments written up at the end of the workshop, folk seemed to really appreciate this approach.
Lee’s choice of ‘helping words’ as an aid to being able to remember different sequences in a dance was invaluable, especially in the more challenging dance, Vallja e Pllanës from Albania. This dance requires much concentration with regards to the co-ordination of arm movements, scarves and footwork and body movement and a verbal reminder of what the different movements represent certainly helps to jog the memory of what we are supposed to be doing, even if the co-ordination is still very much an on-going work in progress!
The Saturday session concluded with Lee playing the mandolin and a small group of workshop participants who had been coached with the words in Bulgarian, playing Tragnala Rumjana, whilst the rest of us danced in a circle around them. A touching and relaxing way, to finish the day.
Sunday morning saw the early arrivals come in and valiantly practic getting the feet and arms to move together in the right way, for Vallja e Pllanës, with some assistance from Mary-Lou, Lee’s partner. Throughout the workshop, at intervals, Lee repeated the dances that he had already taught.
Lee has left us with an outstanding collection of dances from a variety of countries which are ‘achievable’ for everyone to be able to enjoy. It will be a pleasure to be able to teach all of these dances to our members and to be able to share Lee’s enthusiasm for folk dancing. His parting words were: to spread the love and share the joy.
Lee did this, in spades! One of the best workshops ever.
