In 2014 this website decided that sometime in the future we would write a script on Lee Friedman and her dancing experiences around the world. Those who personally know Lee are aware that she is rarely sitting still. She is a regular participant at dance workshops around the world offering instruction in many genre's of dance. It was decided to try to follow Lee and thus began a three year attempt to follow her across the globe. In that time we know that she has done Greek dancing in Greece, Nordic partner dancing in Norway and some type of folk dancing in China at a minimum. In the United States she is a regular at the California Stockton dance festival and recruits the food and kitchen service personnel at the Maine Woods dance camp. In fact, as this is starting to be written during President's Day 2017, one of our editor's received the text message to the left: Lee was at another dance weekend, this time Dance Flurry in Sarasota Springs, where among the dance genre's taught was a variation of Salsa known as Rueda. Any reader interested can learn about Rueda on some of our scripts including the salsa script (at the bottom) and you can see an actual Rueda performance in the Rueda script, Lee is referencing a weekly Friday night session of Rueda that occurs on the University Of Pennsylvania campus. In addition, one of our editors personally participates in sessions organized by Maestro Flaco as indicated in our POTS script.

We should note that sometime in 2015 one of our editors sat down and created what this website calls a preliminary script about Lee and Patty Segal's extra-Israeli dance activities at the time and you can see this script by clicking here. One of the events highlighted in that script deals with a special session of International dance that occurred at Camp Hill Kimberton in March '14 and the script you are now reading expounds on that event. Three years later Lee DJ'd and organized an event occurring at the Cinnaminson Folk Dance session on Feb 4th, 2017 which we will cover at the bottom of this script.

So, the following script is an attempt to somewhat follow Lee through a three year period from 2014 to 2017.

Anyone interested in dance in this day and age knows that there are multiple genres available to pursue. It wasn't always that way. The study of human groups and their activities is known as Folkways and most publications on Folkways assume that the earliest dancing would represent a successful hunt. If not indicated by dance, it would be carved on a cave wall as indicated in this montage consisting of pictures that can be found on the internet. Hunts were done by the male population of a group (or tribe). What about the females in the tribe? Probably they put on dances highlighting their feminine figures and this led to courtship and the propagation of the tribe. This is not unique to nature as many species have ceremonial dances by one or both sexes that lead to mating.

No doubt some smart caveman recognized that dancing went best with sound. Our vocal cords probably were the first "instrument" to provide accompany. After that, bored out ivory or bone became the basis of flutes. Stones hit together provided what we would today call percussion. Someone eventually figured out that stretched animal skin could be pounded to create sounds as could circular pieces of wood. Different length bamboo reeds could also be used to produce sound even recognizable today. In this way, and others, what we know as music was added to these dancing rituals.

It is said that in the Balkans, and what we call the Middle East, every valley had its own favorite dances and music. As communication and road structure improved, one assumes that strolling minstuels promoted and seeded various music and dances throughout a region (possibly with the region bounded by knowledge of a specific language). After a while dances and their associated music became a staple of an ethnicity and these ethnicities to some degree represented what we would call nations today. Dances of the nations of the Balkans and Middle East - such as Greece, Romania, the present state of Israel (although previously designated as Palestinian) and Bulgaria - make up much of what we now consider as International dance. This picture lists some older folk dances associated with each of these four countries. The Israeli dances are from the late 1920's. Other countries, and even more so in the case of the various Islands of Greece outside the mainland, would have their own traditional music and dance.

Keeping track and recording the history of International dances must require quite an effort. This website knows the effort that its editors expend trying to keep track of dances in an era of videos, databases and other web sites on an international media such as the internet. Think of the effort dealing with older dances in an era of no mass communication. This has opened up areas of research for people who are interested in the various folkways of different societies. One such person, Daniela Ivanova-Nyberg, pictured here, is a PHD in folkways specializing in the study of Bulgarian dance. Here we see her in traditional Bulgarian clothes which is also part of her research.

Among Daniela's present activities is teaching Bulgarian dance around the world but especially in her newer residence of Seattle, a city she has adopted since her marriasge in 2008. One such teaching session will be analyzed below but, like most teachers, teaching youngsters these traditions must be a highlight to her. These pictures show Daniela in this capacity. One of our editors has had the experience of attending one of Daniela's dance seminars as you will see below and he is sure that the youngster's enjoy their time with her.

We have mentioned above Daniela's academic prowess and this one picture in this montage, taken from the internet, proves our point. Besides a wonderful world wide demonstrator of dance, Daniela has done the research to recreate older Bulgarian dances and folkways and this has resulted in her attainment of several masters and a PHD in Ethnochoreology (dance ethnology or the study of dance and its effect on culture) awarded by The Institute of Art Studies at The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. You can find out more about her activities and publications on her website http://www.danielaivanova-dance.com and https://independent.academia.edu/DanielaIvanovaNyberg. Note: In Seattle she also teaches the Bulgarian language to non-Bulgarian adults and for this class she maintains a Bulgarian grammar website at http://www.grambulgaria.com

You can see in the past few montages above that Ivanova was and is pursuing both dance and academia pursuits. Let's turn our attention to another woman, Lee Friedman, who has done the same. A native of Youngstown Ohio, Lee found herself at the Education school of Temple University in Philadelphia as she earned her masters in Special Education. This would be the precursor to her many years spent teaching and counseling students at Northeast High School near Castor and Cottman in Philadelphia. While in graduate school, Lee is introduced to International dancing when she attends the Tuesday night International dance session at the steps of the Art Museum. This begins a life long interest in this type of dancing. Note: This dance session is still active using the Museum terrac in the warmer seasons and Lloyd Hall on Kelly drive during the cooler months

Many International dancers also partake in Israeli dancing. At the time that Lee learns about this - again the seventies - Israeli dancing is starting to become its own genre as new choreographers - and the use of newer and livelier music - make the newer dances very different in look and feel from the older established "Israeli" dances that were an integral part of the International dance genre. Lee starts to go over to the University Of Pennsylvania on Wednesday nights where Israeli dance is performed. This montage shows some early pictures of Lee at these events.

By the mid 80's when the Israeli dance session moves to the Gershman Y, Lee is part of the committee: a group of dancers who lead the session especially in the teaching of new dances. In this regard she teams up with another dancer and every so many weeks this team teaches a new dance. To learn these dances Lee develops the habit of taking weekend seminars at various Israeli (and International) work shops something she will continue to do long after the Gershman Y session ceases to exist.

As Lee travels around the country, not surpringly she finds herself generally in educational facilities for these dance workshops. We say not surprisingly because these facilities need to maintain residential areas for students but a good part of the year - generally summers and holidays - the facility is empty of clients. So there is a natural mutual attraction between dance camps and educational facilities. Lee notices that in some cases a rather peculiar architecture is on display, an architecture that eschews right angles (or non plumb as described by architects). The closest facility in the Philadelphia area having this type of architecture is CampHill Kimberton on Pughtown road in Chester County. This is an educational facility catering to the mentally challenged. Lee in fact visits this location for a dance camp and is intrigued enough by it - you can see some of the pictures here that are in the facility's newsletter - that she does a little research on her own as indicated below.

In the late 1800's, the German Philosopher Rudolf Steiner began to envision a type of educational approach based on freeing a child's mind to be more creative. His philosophy, anthroposophy, was designed to always allow for, encourage and increase the imagination of children. This montage has several pictures of Steiner who died in 1925.

Steiner's philosophy was the basis of what is now known as the Waldarf schools, of which there are more than a thousand around the world. Part of this freeing of imagination is caused by unique architectural design which encourages non rectangular building structure(s). In Steiner's opinion this type of design would be a catalyst in encouraging a child's creativity and curiousity. You can read more about this by visiting the North American Waldorf website at https://waldorfeducation.org/. This montage shows some of the Waldorf school architecture from around the world as found on wikipedia.

Several school campuses in Chester County follow these disciplines although they are part of the CampHill organization, a series of schools around the country. Camphill Kimberton, on Pughtown road between Kimberton and Rt 100, is a larger campus with multiple buildings housing a school for the mentally challenged and a cafe for travelers with a sence of architectural adventure given that the buildings apply the Steiner philosophy. As luck would have it, the news in March' 2014 from Camphill Kimberton (through the auspices of the Kimberton Folk Dance society, mentioned below) is not about educational philosophy, but of Bulgarian Folkways as a March 28th seminar with the previously mentioned Daniela Ivanova is announced. This montage shows additional announcements (1) on Daniela's website as an Email and (2) from the Newark International folk dancers

We should mention the host organization of this coming event. One of our editors spends a lot of time in Kimberton shopping at Kimberton Whole Foods, picking up vegatables at the Kimberton CFA, having lunch at the Station Bistro and every now and then having dinner at the Seven Stars Inn. Inside the little town, which is part of East Pikeland township, is a building dedicated to dancing - the Kimberton Dance Society - and the Kimberton Folk Dance society generally meets there on most Friday nights. But a larger crowd was expected we assume, so the venue for the Bulgarian dance seminar was changed to the Camp Hill Kimberton campus. If you are interested you can find information about the Kimberton International folk dance session on goggle groups at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/phl.dance/NvHG4i7NA-Y. This montage is the Kimberton group's own announcement of Daniela's appearance.

Coincident with this news at that time, this website became aware of Lee's multiple activities. It seemed as if every week brought news of another camp she was attending. At many sessions she would show a new dance that she had picked up from a workshop from afar. This was at a point where this web site was deciding what it should cover and there seemed to be concensus that a script on Lee's dance related activities might be of interest. So, this web site also made plans to attend Ivanova's seminar although we realized that Bulgarian dancing would be tangential to our main Israeli dance focus. On March 28, 2014 armed with a camera, our photographer accompanied Lee to this somewhat remote area of Chester county. Even having been briefed on the architecture, it was still surprising. It felt almost as if one was in a doll house of questionable construction, probably what was intended. These were the first pictures taken trying to analyse and observe all the effects. Cameras give a 2D display of a 3D landscape and even the bathroom door, seemingly normal in this 2D picture, was askew when confronted in reality.

Of course, of all the people attending, our photographer had the least exposure to this type of architecture. Lee had seen this before and had even warned about it. Daniela certainly wasn't affected as she was well propared for her evening of instruction. Several dances were taught that evening with at least one being similar to a line dance. In this montage notice that Daniela is at the head of the line of dancers as she shows a circle dance. Lee was late in joining this effort and the leftmost picture shows her on the stairs as she enters the floor.

We now see Daniela teaching another dance. Notice how she is now in the middle of the circle. Daniela, like Lee, has a lifetime of experience in teaching and demonstration so we assume the she obviously feels this position is best to demonstrate to her pupils, the Kimberton folk dancers. So, this montage shows Daniela teaching from the middle of the circle.

Our final montage of photos of the dance instruction this night shows Daniela in the front of the participants who are arranged in lines. We assume this is a line dance that she is showing. You can see Lee positioned right in front of the camera.

Another nice touch to the evening occurs at the end. Refreshments are served. As you can see the participants share drinks (probably non alcoholic) with their instructor for the eveining, Daniela Ivanova. If anyone had interests in Bulgarian dancing and folklore, who best to ask than Daniela? No doubt for some of the dancers, although a distinct minority, this was the highlight of the evening.

With the March 28th event having been successfully attended, this web site would keep in touch with Lee to ascertain where she would be the next weekend or where she had been the past. For you, the reader's, information we count 7 countries visited while we've been keeping count: (1)Sweden (2)Norway (3)Denmark (4)Greece (5)China (6)Canada and (7)Bulgaria. Except for China, all this travel was done to attend foreign dance festivals. Even China, supposedly taken for education and travel, ended up with Lee attending several line dance classes as she travelled around that country. This montage deals with several trips that Lee took to the Toronto Is Real Israeli dance festival which included a cruise on Lake Ontario, A Phillies game when the team was visiting Toronto and the dancing at the festival.

Several of these trips to foreign countries have been tied to the Jim Gold International company, run by the famous folkdancer Jim Gold, who takes folkdancers to various countries for both touring and dancing. Recently (as this is written) Lee was in Greece with this group. This montage shows Gold's advertisement for the trip and a group photo at one of the Greek tourist sites. At right is Gold's offerings for 2017 - as with any picture in these montages, click for an enlargement - and we might mention that Jim Gold will be hosting a trip to Israel in 2018 that Lee expects to attend.

Of course this trip to Greece would also include several nights of folk dancing. This montage, taken from Gold's facebook page, shows Lee in the midst of dancing Sta Dyo. We're sure that there were many traditional Greek folk dances performed on this trip and this is because she has had many years worth of experience in learning these dances.

Lee also was taking pictures and videos for her facebook page and we again present Lee, this time from the back, in a blue blouse, in the midst of the circle. From the positioning of the other dancers this is probably a different dance than pictured above.

Of course, Lee also attends multiple workshops in the United States. It has to be a lot easier given that a passport and/or visa isn't needed to arrive at one's destination. One such workshop is the Maine Woods dance camp which takes place annually in the middle of August. The camp has its own web site at www.mainewoodsdancecamp.org and we have copied the schedule for this year leftmost in this montage. The rest of the pictures show the area that the dancers are in through the course of the camp in addition to Lee's status at the camp: being in charge of recruiting the food and kitchen service personnel.

The Maine Woods web site has some pictures of the dancing that occurs each year. The pictures here, highlighting Lee, were taken in 2009 but we doubt that this would look different to pictures taken any year at the camp. Any pictures would include Lee dancing as she pursues and hones her International dance expertise.

Above we've highlighted only several of the workshops, both foreign and domestic, that Lee annually or periodically partakes in. There are many more we could mention: The Stockton California Dance Camp comes to mind immediately. These pictures come from two single day events that occurred in two different locations: all but the rightmost in central New Jersey with the rightmost from New Orleans. Annually the Morristown, New Jersey folkdance session runs an event where other sessions join in and even demonstrate. This is what you are seeing in the leftmost shots featuring a mostly Chinese ex-pat group based in Edison, NJ. Besides watching, Lee participates in the dances that are open to the attendees. The rightmost shot is Lee practicing her Cajun steps in a place most appropriate for this: New Orleans.

Let's turn our attention toward the Delaware Valley. For many years Lee has been an organizer of the Cinnaminson folk dance society that meets the first Saturday of the month at the Westfield school in Cinnaminson. One such organizational achievement was her help, although she would want this web site to note that she was not alone, in getting the Zlatne Uste Balkan Band from New York to give a concert there one Saturday night several years ago as this montage shows.

Our research indicates that this is no mean feat. This band specializes in music that is perfect for International dance as its repertoire is from the various ethnicities of the Balkans - Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Romanian (including Roma). Every year the band plays host to other such bands at the New York Golden Festival (which is really in Brooklyn). These are pictures of that festival found on their web site, www.zlatneuste.org. Claustrophobics be warned if these pictures represent anything like the crowds that attend this event. Additionally, the band sometimes performs overseas - representing this country - at appropriate music venues. Securing the services of this band for a Saturday night performance at the Cinnaminson was a real positive for this session.

And so this brings this script to the last Lee related event we will cover. We've looked at various foreign and domestic dance events and it's obvious that Lee loves to dance. And think about the various genres of dance that she participates in. Organizational skills have been discussed above in the previous montage not to mention her experience organizing the kitchen service in Maine. Could we find an event where this is all on display? The answer is yes! On Feb 4th, 2017 at the Cinnaminson Folk Dance session Lee was to be in charge of everything: programming the music, organizing, securing the food and leading the dancing. This montage shows a few shots of the preparation of the gym hall at the Westfield school where the Cinnaminson session is held. Notice in the left most photo, at the top, a type of balcony can be used for overhead shots which our photographer was able to exploit later that night.

The school itself is of interest. Part of the Friends group of schools, its origins date back into George Washington's time. Today its web site says that it houses less than 200 students but its classroom teacher/student ratio is about 10. The school is very proud of its students and their academic attainment. The Cinnaminson session has been using the gym at the school for at least the last 10 years. This montage indicates the Email announcing the Feb 4th event and a map leading to the school.

Normally Cinnaminson has a lower turnout than many folk dancing sessions. It would be expected to see 20 to 30 dancers here but another event, an International dance workshop that weekend, was bound to keep the attendance low. In the end 22 dancers would show up this night and although the session started at 8PM, when there were but 4 people, dancers would join the circle of dance throughout the evening. Lee was in charge of the dance repertoire this night and she started with a dance very familiar to Israeli dancers - Nigun Atik aka Zemer Atik. This montage records the beginning of the dance session when Nigun Atik was being played.

These pictures also are a part of the early dances. Perhaps 10 people have shown up by this point. Nevertheless, Lee's personality drives the enthusiasm that we see in the dancers. And you can be sure that Lee is encouraging all to hold hands as she feels the folk dancing is best served by this human interconnection. And, by the way, the gentleman in black leading the circle in this montage and above is Clark Loverage, Lee's ex husband, who usually is administratively in charge of Cinnaminson.

Some dancers arrive who are well known to this web site as will be explained later. This is a set of shots of one of the earlier dances when there was about ten or eleven dancers present.

As more dancers enter the floor, our photographer went up to the balcony mentioned previously. Unfortunately our web site does not know enough about International dance to guess which dance/song is being played, but here's a set of photographs of a circle dance photographed from above. And speaking of the repertoire that night, please consult our session playlist script to see Lee's entire playlist for that evening.

There was an added reason for Lee's involvement that evening: the session was the perfect excuse to celebrate Lee's birthday. There was a big cake from Wegmans, ice cream from WaWa and other foods you would find at any birthday party. Our photographer took all of this in as you can see in this montage. This included a picture of Lee with her good friend, Sharon Polsky, who has been a travel companion to Lee on many of the trips noted above. As noted by our photographer, the session sang Happy Birthday to Lee around 9PM that night.

Similar to Isreli dance, International does provide for partner dancing. One partner dance that is shared by both Israeli and International is the Salty Dog Rag. Rag is a jazz term generally meaning a tune that is fast paced - perhaps even accelerating as it moves to conclusion. Salty Dog probably is a nickname for a sailor and we think the song was created during WWII. The composer is credited as Papa John Gordy, pictured at right, although the most famous version (and probably the one used at these dance sessions) is by Red Foley, pictured to the left, who was a famous country and western singer during the middle of the last century.

And so, here are some pictures taken from above showing some shots of the session doing the Salty Dog Rag. These pictures are stills taken from several small videos of this dance taken by our photographer. It was impossible to fuse these small clips together to give you a full video of this dance although that's what we would have preferred. Best this web site can do is show another video further below. But first, one last unexpected coincidence of this session!

This web site would be remiss if it didn't note the appearance of the three sisters - Ellen, Lisa and Joan - leftmost in this montage. Joan and Lisa used to be regulars at the Sunday morning Germantown Jewish Centre sessions where they made the acquaintance of Lee who is also a semi-regular there. They now confine themselves to International dancing every weekend alternating between Cinnaminson, Palmyra and the aforementioned Kimberton sessions. In addition, they are the daughters of Doris Polsky, pictured at the left of the rightmost picture of her and her twin, Shirley. Doris, who died mid 2015, was famous throughout the Germantown/Chestnut Hill area of Phialdephia both as the co-owner of Twin Realty and for her real life adventures in the army during World War II paralleling the story of the movie, Hidden Figures. Doris and her twin Shirley calculated ballistic data for the army during that war.

The Sisters have always been very generous with the Germantown session and have extended this generousity to the International dance sessions they now attend. When showing up at Cinnaminson, they usually bring several pizzas for the hungry dancers to eat. This night was no exception as you can see in this picture.