My sister Donna has been on a world tour, and her latest stop is in Albania where she is studying the culture and learning the intricate dances.
She sent me a video of what she has learned so far.
I’m not sure which one she is in the video, but certainly she’s one of the people with long hair. She seems to have aged a bit since she began the tour however many years ago.
Albanian dance is very highly ritualized. What you will see in the video is a portion of an ancient Albanian rain dance. Every movement has a meaning. Waving that handkerchief (or napkin) represents beseeching the gods to send rain after many moons of dry weather.
Or possibly it’s a fertility dance. I get those mixed up.
The December 16th episode of Scriptnotes has Mike Makowsky as a guest. He’s the creator of the miniseries Death By Lightning which I wrote about a little while ago. I recommended the series, and now I recommend listening to the podcast as he talks about getting the series made against a lot of odds.
You can download the episode here.