the inevitable has happened

I've joined a Karelian folk dancing troupe.  Now I bet you weren't expecting that when you read "the inevitable," but that just proves you don't know me.  Because everyone who knows me knows it's been my dream to be in a folk dancing troupe ever since I was an 18 year-old welder working in that steel mill in Pittsburgh.  Although now that I think about it, that may have been the premise of the movie Flashdance.  Either way, the important thing is I joined a folk group.

This is not a joke.

So how does one join such a group?  By saying "yes" to everything.  It started when folk-minded friends Olga (my original link to the folk community, you may remember), Lena, Dima, and Yuri invited me to join them at a Finno-Karelian folk concert last night.  At the concert, Dima insisted I come to their group rehearsal the following night for some dancing and an all-around good time.  So I did.  Turns out, I'm not totally terrible at the Karelian waltz.  In fact, I'm a bit of what you might call an idiot savant (though some would argue I'm just an idiot).  Either way, this resulted in Dima and a good portion of the ladies in the group insisting I join them for their performance on Sunday.  The troupe leader, Andre, seemed less than thrilled at the prospect, protesting that they only have twelve available seats on the bus (it's in a village).  After they made him count out about five times that only eleven people were set to go, he relented.

So on Sunday, I'll be climbing onto a bus in a garish red shirt and sash to go to a tiny village in the Karelian countryside to put on a performance celebrating Maslenitsa, an ancient religious/folk holiday that's a sort of Slavic Mardi Gras (with blins instead of beads).  Hard to imagine a more authentic Russo-Karelian experience than that.  Let no one say I've disregarded the Fulbright Program's imperative to immerse oneself in one's community!  Pictures of my embarrassing myself to come.  I mean come on, who needs more than one run-through of a dance repertoire before performing it, anyway?