Machol Romania Day 1: The Language of Pain is Universal (But I'm Still Pretty Lost)

I’m fully aware this post is almost a week late. I’m also fully aware that during MR, at any given point I had a choice between dancing, sleeping, and blogging. I’ll let you guess which one won. Hint: By the end, my English was worse than that of my Hungarian friends.

Thursday morning I awoke to the sounds of my legs screaming, having cleverly forgotten to stretch after dancing the night before. I proceeded down to breakfast WHERE THERE WAS STILL NO WATER and saw almost no one. I felt rather proud of myself, congratulating my genetics and youthful blood for allowing me to greet the morning when my compatriots were undoubtedly incapable of leaving bed. Naturally, it turned out that I had gone to the wrong room, and almost everyone else had been in the real breakfast room long before. To rephrase: I had gotten lost WITHOUT LEAVING THE HOTEL. Let it never be said that I am without talent. Also, I found out later (true story) that while I had been smugly consuming my toast and nursing my legs, some of the Turks had actually been salsa dancing. Yep.

Having acted the idiot (*of course* I was acting. I’m just really good) that morning, I tried to maintain some level of dignity for the morning sessions. Unfortunately, this was a dance camp, so dignity was not really an option. In fact, while I’m here, let me issue a belated blanket apology to everyone I smacked/stepped on/crashed into/turned into a newt/etc, because I’m sure the various Turks, Serbs, Bulgarians, etc. at the camp are totally reading this blog right now. I blame the Diet Coke or, rather, the lack thereof.The first session was with Oren Ashkenazay (sp?), where he taught Dance I Can’t Pronounce Because I Don’t Really Speak Hebrew I, DICPBIDRSH II, and Atah Ahi (I looked up that last one). I actually already knew Atah Ahi, but didn’t realize I knew it until the music came on. Apparently my muscle memory does not activate until I hear music, which might explain my decided lack of prowess in soccer, swimming, basketball, etc. I would have been an Olympian if I learned to swim in time to Mamma Mia (more on ABBA in the next entry. Oh yes. There was ABBA). After Oren’s session we had one with Eran, who taught three more versions of DICPBIDRSH (wow, typing that is actually harder than typing the full name. I need to come up with more acronym-friendly sarcasm). Interestingly enough, while Oren taught all his own dances, Eran taught only one of his, while the other two were from two other choreographers. The meaner part of me (yes, there is a nicer one, she just doesn’t get out much) suspected that Eran was hoping people would confuse him with Gadi Bitton, which, in the Israeli dance world, is similar to being confused with Elvis. [Obligatory sideburns joke here]

To be honest, I have no recollection of which dances we learned in the third session (I bet I can guess their names, though) because at that point, most of my mental energy went towards remaining reasonably vertical. It may have been taught by Erwin and Dana but, then again, it may well have been taught by two flying fish named Steve and HappyDance. I do remember lunch, however, if only for the moment when I ended up sitting smack in the middle of three different conversations, in Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Turkish (Turkarian, if we’re going for continuity). It’s a good thing my mind was incapable of even trying to focus, otherwise it probably would have exploded and that would have been REALLY awkward. Also, at one point, I was talking to one of the Turkish guys about Miracle Whip. He thought it was good, which led me to suspect he had never actually tasted Turkish food. No one who has eaten gyros, or really anything else, could place Miracle Whip in the same sentence as ‘good.’

The last session was for debkas, which are a special form of Israeli dance that require even more stomping than usual. I would like to take a moment to point out that I have been doing all of my dancing in jazz flats, which provide about as much support as the bras I wore in 7th grade. I got to feel smug again during the session, because I already knew one of the debkas being taught and actually recognized it BEFORE the music came on. Naturally, the version she taught was different, so I ended up doing it wrong. I’m noticing a pattern here…

Day 1 ended with what the organizers called a ‘Baby Party,’ the idea being that since this was the first Machol Romania, we were all its godparents (can you imagine how complicated that would be? Though the kid would get an epifuck of presents). They asked everyone to dress up like babies, which led to some things that WERE NOT OKAY. Do not click this link if you are pregnant, may become pregnant, or are not legally blind. I politely declined the invitation to make a complete imbecile out of myself (some parts are still missing, thank you); I had my dignity. Or rather, I thought I had my dignity until Balázs helpfully pointed out that the lollipop I had been oh-so-maturely licking had turned not just my tongue, but my entire mouth blue. I had been dancing around looking like one of the Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine. Despite multiple intense scrubbing sessions in the bathroom, my teeth remained so azurely-inclined for pretty much the rest of the night. I had already decided to be a little more responsible for my health, so instead of dancing until 1:30 am without stretching, I only danced until 3:00 am without stretching. Wait…