Swedish Folk Minuet - some clips to give you a flavour

Here are a few clips which will give you a flavour of the playfulness and adaptability of this dance, before we start working on it in the series of videos which you'll find just after the warm-up section.
The first clip is a performance piece but it has lots of minuet elements in it and shows dancers dancing individually in a group and also in pairs. In the second clip, the minuet starts at about 2:10 - before that it's slängpolska. In the third clip you can't see much footwork but you can see the way the two dancers move around each other.

General Warm Up and Introductory Stuff

It's always a good idea to do some warming up before throwing yourself into whatever may be the challenge that is playing hide and seek with you. Here are some things you can dip into before tackling any of the other videos.
I've also included a longer warm up, body-loosening sequence of exercise which is based on tai chi principles.

Swedish Folk Minuet

This delightfully playful partner dance is very adaptable to solo dancing.
I learned this dance firstly from Hester and Rolf Dahlström who shared their understanding of it (after much pleading and cajoling on our part because they felt they weren't 'expert' enough to teach it), and later from Petra Eriksson and Anton Schneider.
Please do some general warming up before you start! Suggestions above or just put on some music and have a little private party.

Fandango on the Balcony

The back story to this first video is on the About page. For the singing, I used a field recording of Dani Detammaeker which was in my collection but I wasn't able to make contact to get permission. Dani - thank you and I hope you don't mind! It should really have been followed by an arin arin, as you'll see in the notes below. But it was my first attempt at making a video of me dancing, and at the time a fandango seemed enough.

Fandango from the Pays Basque - the tutorials

A series of short-ish videos introducing the version of the fandango from the Pays Basque which I learned, initially informally from Friedrun Marstaller at St Chartier in 1990 (I pestered her until she showed me!) and then from Patxi Perez at Gennetines and also at the stage which he and Agnès Perez ran at Basusarri, which I went to once, in the mid-1990s. I mostly remember that it was Very Hot.
By the way, if anyone out there still has my copy of the VHS video of Patxi teaching the fandango, may I please have it back?
This is a version which you will commonly see in a bal folk context, it's not what you would see in a show or competition.
Thanks to Steve Turner for allowing me to use some of his music, and to Ben Farmer for recording fandango music specially for me to use! You'll find links to them in the links section.

Arin arin

In a bal folk, a fandango is always followed by an arin arin.
Not being much of a dance historian, I've never tried very hard to find out why. (If anyone out there knows, please help.)
This little series is a Work in Progress. So far I've only made videos of the chorus step and the first figure. I am indebted to Ben Farmer, once again, for kindly (and patiently) making recordings for me to use in the teaching; and also to Koen Dhondt of Frisse Folk, Belgium, whose online workshops on the arin arin made me realise what gaps there were in my knowledge! Access to Koen's teaching material is available to purchase, see the link section at the end.