Dancing Around Trivia Quiz

Answer:

To dance, meaning 'to move rhythmically to music' comes through Middle English from the Old French 'dancer'. [Concise Oxford Dictionary - tenth edition.] It leads to words such as danceable and non-dancers, and also to the phrases dance band and dance hall. Perhaps not surprisingly, abundance, accordance, attendance, avoidance, and guidance come from the verbs abound, accord, attend, avoid, and guide.

A barn dance is a social occasion for country dancing. It can be held in a barn, but it is much more usual to see one taking place in some other type of hall. They are sometimes held as fundraisers for schools or youth groups. Similar events have become very popular in the United Kingdom as part of wedding celebrations, when they are often given the Scottish name of a ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee). Callers at these events are very experienced at explaining a few simple terms and getting complete beginners to be able to join in the dances.

Circle dances, square dances, and contradances have been used as formats for dancing for hundreds of years. Sometimes partners stay together throughout a dance, and at others they move on to a new partner in every turn. Many of the traditional dances crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the early settlers, and were then brought back to Europe with the revival of interest in such dances in the first half of the twentieth century.

While some people only occasionally attend dances and appreciate simple moves such as stars, circles, or a do-si-dos, there are others who take part in regular weekly or monthly clubs and enjoy more complicated movements like a dolphin hey, or a flutter wheel, to name just two more of the dozens of different moves available in country dancing. The traditional movements can be combined in many different ways to create new dances.

Folk dancing has been described as exercise for both the body and the mind, and it's a very sociable pastime. In fact it is just 'what the doctor ordered' to stave off old age, so why not give it a try? It can be done by people of all ages from five-year olds in primary school, who really wanted another go, to octogenarians (and older), who sometimes get dances written for their special birthdays or anniversaries.