Tacit knowledge in my feet

Some weeks ago I was invited to join a small group of people that share interest in dancing to folklore music from Balkan. Some of them have been dancing for 30 years - almost as many years as I have not been dancing…

They had collections of CD-s with mixture of melodies from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania …and those “new countries” from Balkan. I joined the circle and tried to follow the directions the ring was moving. But there was much more than directions to take care of: there were jumps with changing frequency, different steps, claps and even turning round and shouting. I tried the best I could at least not to move in opposite direction or crush with someone.

After about an hour, when another unfamiliar melody started, to my surprise I suddenly felt like I could dance - as if my feet suddenly understood what they were supposed to do! “It seems like I’ve learned something today”, I thought proudly. But when the next dance started I was as uncoordinated as I was at the beginning… What happened?

After a closer analyse of the music I was able to dance to (and reading on the CD-cover), I realized that the it was from Macedonia – which once was a part of my home country Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia - which even non-existing still is the place I grew up, had friends of different nationalities and learned dances from different geographical parts – you can probably read the nostalgic tone between the lines…) I didn’t consciously recognize the music or the moves, but my body did. May be the knowledge was in my ears? Or it had been stored in my feet… for 28 years…