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How to dance a polonaise (I always used to spell it “polanaise”…oops!)

Anyway, I nicked from a wedding invitation of the interweb’s:

August 3, 2000

Dear Guests:

We would like to invite you to dance the Polonaise as the opening dance of the wedding, Polonaise is the Polish national dance that is traditionally danced at official occasions, and weddings. It is a slow, walking dance, danced at 3/4 time. It is characterized by fluid and graceful motions, straight upright positions of partners and bows of the partners toward the public and toward each other.

Position of partners: side-to-side, facing the direction that you dance. The lady stands on the right, the gentleman on the left. The left hand of the lady and the right hand of the gentleman are joined together and they are extended forward, straight at elbows.

Basic steps: all movements of both partners are mirror images. The lady starts with the right foot and the gentleman with the left food. The first movement is an outside bow where the lady bends her left knee and extends forward sideways her right leg. The gentleman bends his right knee and extends forward sideways his left leg.

Next two steps are simple walking two steps forward. The lady makes it with the left, right foot, the gentleman with the right, left foot.

The last movements in the measure is the bow of the partners toward each other and it is the mirror image of the first movement. The lady bends her right knee and extends forward sideways her left leg. The gentleman bends his left knee and extends forward sideways his right leg.

All dancing pairs will dance on a straight line. then the leading pair will stop, while the rest of the pairs will approach each other and stop as well. The partners will then face each other and hold their hands up to form the tunnel. next, all the pairs one by one will go under the tunnel. Leaving the tunnel one partner will go left and the other right, dancing the same steps by themselves and eventually they will meet again etc. Alternatively, one pair from the tunnel goes left, the other right and the dance eventually joins four people together. However, I am afraid we may not have enough room for that. The best is to watch and follow the leading pair of the dance.

We would like to invite you to join us in this tradition (do not worry, even Rafal has never danced it before). So, please bring your dancing shoes along to the rehearsal dinner.

Sincerely

So, anyone fancy a bit of a Polish hoolie some time?