Sasha – the story of this dance

Published by Bob Dalsemer on the Pourparler Google Group:

“Raz” means once. Russians count off something (essentially) once, two, three, rather than one, two, three. It’s idiomatic! I majored in Russian many years ago. And here is how I learned Sasha:

I learned Sasha from Hanne Jørgensen when she was the “exchange Dane” at the John C. Campbell Folk School in 1992. She had learned it at her Folk School in Denmark. With the help of her Folk School teacher, we traced it to a series of folk dance books by Claus Jørgensen (no relation to Hanne) called Ska’ Vi Danse published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen in Copenhagen during the 1980’s. It turned out that I had met Claus Jørgensen in April, 1988 on my first calling tour of Denmark. He had taken a two weekend course on American contras and squares that I taught in Arhus and had given me a copy of one of his books on the Lancers – which, of course was in Danish. I subsequently wrote to Mr. Jørgensen and he told me he had adapted Sasha from a children’s singing game he had learned at a folk dance course in Germany during the 1970’s.  At the time, two friends and I were teaching folk dancing to grades 3-5 at Martin’s Creek School, just down the road from the Folk School. With a grant from the NC Arts Council we published Mr.Jørgensen’s version of Sasha (with his permission) in a collection called Folk Dance Fun For Schools and Families (1995). Fiddler Steve Hickman learned it from me and helped spread it around the country at various dance camps.