Dear Subscribers,

Happy 2011!

New Year's Eve is a time of jubilant celebration and the predictions for the coming year, well, they can wait! I have put together a short (!) program to help you (and me) celebrate in style. I know we are supposed to have a Blue Danube Waltz and Radetzky March, but with my Uranus afflictions, I can't conform.

My mother used to play the entire score of Kalman's Die Csárdásfürstin and she sang it while playing. Not knowing any better, I probably thought the music was Swedish, but around age four, I made a connection between the music and dance. My parents were both folk dancers and they dressed me up in my costume and took me to international festivals where I truly went around the world in music. Being fiery, it was the long ribbons, red boots, and the fantastic music of Eastern Europe that etched their imprint on my young psyche but by seven, I had heard mariachi music and by my early teens, I heard my first Filipino music. I might have been 16 before hearing Polynesian music. I loved it all and was a pretty good dancer, even appearing on TV a few times before I was 20 and doing a tiny, tiny bit of choreography for Asian dances. So, thinking about the world, its diversity and complexity, and knowing that the soul expresses itself through music, I wanted to kick off 2011 with a few selections that will at minimum improve your circulation. If they make your feet go wild, all the better.

We can start a bit traditionally, but with a twist, how about a Viennese czardas? Don't worry, no opera, just Andre Rieu:

There are no red boots, but I found them here:

After such an exuberant mazurka, we hardly need a polka, but then every New Year's Eve must a polka have:

and the obligatory waltz:

Wishing you a very, very happy celebration and a progressive New Year.

Ingrid

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2010

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