ISRAELI DANCE & ROBIN STARR (OF THE DIFFERENT SOCKS DANCE COMPANY)

HEM OSIM OTI SAMEACH - (2007) - CIRCLE

    In the early 90's, I created a gentle dance to the song Mila Tova, but had edited the music quite extensively. When I made the decision to no longer edit music, I retired the dance from active service. I had previously made dances for two of our five grandchildren, but now decided to make this dance for all of them, hence the title, the translation being "They Make Me Happy". Because I liked the steps from the old dance, I decided to bring it out of retirement but write new music for it. The writing was a reversal of the usual procedure of fitting steps to existing music. It required the alteration of only a few steps,  but remained faithful to the initial choreography. Having done that, I had a brief discussion with my son Adam, a professional musician, about the arrangement and form of the music, then left the rest up to him. He recorded the music, his arrangement and finished product far exceeding my expectations.

Since deciding to put the dance on this website, I have reworked it a little more to incorporate some of the symbolism detailed below.

In common with a lot of my dances, hand holding is important. In this dance, the swinging of the hands is a reference to walking with the grandchildren, swinging hands as we walk.

There are two places in the dance where there are one or two counts of stillness - one at the transition between the end of the first time through and the commencement of the second time, and one at the end of the second turn near the end of the second time through. This change in the choreography was done in recognition of the times when we would stop our walking and either rest momentarily or watch someone or something of interest.

The up and down movement in the third, fourth and fifth steps of the dance, a combination repeated throughout the dance, represent a small child having a small slide - an event much anticipated during our walks.

When we skip in and out of the centre, the hand movements represent gently stroking the head of a child.

At the end of the dance, the music gets softer and the steps correspondingly smaller - we're done, reached home, time for a rest.

The thumbs up at the very end is not part of the dance - it is there just for the grandchildren.

HOMEPAGE    GET THE MUSIC    READ ABOUT & WATCH THE DANCES