New Yiddish Dance at Summer Weimar
Dancemaster Steve Weintraub posted this to his blog a couple of weeks ago. It sparked some good discussion on the Jewish-Music list and should be shared (and discussed) more widely, I think.
The Age of Exploration: New Yiddish dance at Yiddish Summer Weimar
The Yiddish dance scene … has [remained] curiously conservative, mostly seeking to reconstruct dimly remembered dances, and teach today's dancers to dance like their great-grandparents. Where the musicians have embarked on an age of exploration, maintaining a conscientious link to the past, but exploring and incorporating material from other cultures or developing the music along the lines of contemporary pop, jazz, and art forms, the dance scene has been wary of any such similar exploration, preferring to delve ever deeper into fine points of "traditional" style. [more]