Author Description

From the INTRODUCTION. It is significant that the folk dance has come to fill a large place in the life of the people of the city. Country men and women coming to the town have left behind them the dances that have formed part of their lives and much of their pleasure, because city conditions were different and country traits unbecoming. Our own country dances "The Lady of the Lake," "Hi! Jim Along," and even the "Virginia Reel" have not survived a separation from their birthplaces. Foreign people coming to our cities form closer groups, and during times of festivity the emotions arising from old associations seek expression in the old dances. The old rhythms of folk dances are common to all human life. Many generations of city-dwelling cannot do more than cover thinly the innate tendencies to dance the old forefather dances of the sod, mountain, or steppe. It needs but the music and festal occasion to fling off newly acquired restrictions which overlie the pure rustic humanity of man. Thus the folk dance has come to signify the revival of the expression of old fundamental rural impulses, pure and lovely as the sunshine of the fields. The general European revival and our own use of the folk dance is an expression of this deep-rooted longing. In New York City dancing has taken its legitimate place in the education and recreation of the children in the schools. There the dances have lightened the formal gymnastics with a natural interest, and have returned large values in a normal joyous expression of fundamental impulses. So few city recreations are not manufactured that the genuine is rare and is to be valued accordingly. This volume of folk dances taken from Swedish sources and sympathetically translated for American use by Mr. Bergquist is genuine and cannot fail to receive the large appreciation it deserves, for he has danced them as his forefathers did in Sweden itself.