Rough world out here, want something interesting/positive? take a look at these

[tornado34jh]

It's in Georgian, but it's basically a rehearsal dance between Virsky (a Ukrainian dance company out of Kyiv) and Ensemble "Rustavi" (a Georgian Dance company actually based in Tbilisi, although Rustavi is about 12 miles SE of Tbilisi)

This is them doing an actual dance battle

[cbabe]

1. The most down right fun you can have upright.

[Drum]

2. Great great stuff--thank you!

[tornado34jh]

3. I like world music

Even though I may not understand what they are saying, I can appreciate good music. Many of them I can actually play on piano.

[niyad]

4. Thank you. That has brightened my night.

[Srkdqltr]

5. Wow amazing

[brer cat]

6. So much joy!

Thank you, tornado34jh.

[tornado34jh]

7. International music

When I was living in northern Virginia, I used to go take the metro to Washington DC and go to the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. I saw Shen Yun once, a Ugandan dance troupe, and a friend of mine whose mother was an organist at a church there performed there as well. Sometimes I do wish I could go back there. But then again, it is too expensive and I don't know anybody recently who lives there.

[3Hotdogs]

8. Amazing.

[stopdiggin]

9. absolutely SUPER. Thanks so much! -(nt)-

[tornado34jh]

10. In case you are wondering

In parts of the first video, the men of the Virsky group are doing what is known as squat dancing. It's common in eastern Slavic dances. You have to have great leg strength and excellent balance to do this. It involves having arms folded or out, and you often see them doing kicks. There are two types of dances where this is common in Ukraine, one is called the hopak, which as the name implies, involves a lot of hopping/jumping, the other is called Kolomyyka. The latter is a fast paced dance from western Ukraine, often common in weddings. It comes from the Hutsuls, a subgroup of Ukrainians in the Carpathian Mountains. They are sometimes considered as Rusyns. Keep in mind the Rusyns are NOT Russians, they are only found in parts of Romania, Slovakia, and parts of western Ukraine. They have their own dialect/language, although they are most closely related to the Ukrainian language. The Kolomyyka dance originated from Kolomyia, a town in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of western Ukraine. Now in regards to the Georgian ones, there are at least 18 different dances, many of them from different regions of Georgia (eg. K'akheti, Adjara [Ach'ara], and others. Some other ones include Q'azbekuri, (I'm using the official Romanization of Georgian; the apostrophe after certain letters are ejectives not found in English; you push the glottis up and it has a distinctive pop or like a stopped sound), Kartuli, and K'int'ouri. Two of the dances, Khanjluri, and Khevsuruli, involve dagger/knife fighting competitions. These are very technical dances and can result in injury. Thus, they require tremendous skill and practice to perform the dance and prevent hurting anyone. The other one you might have seen is called Mtiuluri, and it also involves competition between men. But unlike the previous two, it does not involve daggers/knives. This involves dance skills more so. However, many other groups in the Caucasus, particularly those in the North Caucasus of Russia (e.g. Adyghe/Karbardian, Chechen, Avar, Ingush, Lezgian) as well as some other groups in Georgia (Abkhaz and Ossetian, although Ossetian is an Eastern Iranian group from the Scythian branch) have more or less similar dances and often use similar instruments with some differences.