July 26 French Dances

Last night’s workshop of French dances included the following dances:

1. La maitre de la maison (Gasgogne)
2. Zazpi jauziak (Pays-Basque)
3. Skarazula Marazula (Provence- from Italy)
4. La bourée des dindes (Morvan – Bourgogne)
5. Bransle d’ Escosse (Poitou)
6. Bransle des chevaux (médiéval)

They were fun, simple, great community dances!!! Thanks, Lyne!

Summer Workshop Schedule is Here!!

Check it out on the Dance Workshops Summer 2011 page ABOVE….

Summer 2011 Workshops!

Something to look forward to….

We will have 6 workshops this summer, two per month June, July, and August. In the line-up are Armenian, Turmen, Greek, French, Croatian…

And each workshop will include reviews of previous dances learned, so they stay in our feet memory!

Stay tuned!

Recipes!

On Thursday, February 17, a group of Joie de Vivre friends gathered in one kitchen to learn to make Romanian dolmas, as well as the Serbian dish known as pita. (Not to be confused with the Arabic bread known by the same name.) Other names from other cultures are borek, banica or gibanica.

Romanian Dolma (stuffed grape leaves):

- Rince the grape leaves (from a jar)
- Dice about 4 onions
- Cut off the hard part of the stems of grape leaves (with scissors)
- In a large bowl, combine coarsly ground meet (beef, pork or veal), about 2 handful of walnuts, dried dill, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
- In a large pot, melt a lot of butter (about half a cup) with oil. Add the onions and cook until they are transparent. Add about 3 tablespoons of paprika.
- Rince about 2 cups of rice and add to the onions.
- Add rice and onions to the meat and mix with hands
- Add 2 tablespoons of tomato stuff  and a little bit of water
- Roll the grape leaves (put about one tablespoon of meat in each leaf)
- Put all the dolmas into the pot and add half a cup of tomato stuff  and then add salted water, almost covering the dolmas.
- Cover the pot.
- Cook for about 2 hours in the oven at 350°

Pita Recipe:

1 container cottage cheese (500 ml)
feta cheese, approximately the same as cottage cheese
1 package frozen spinach
4 eggs

1 package phyllo
vegetable oil
club soda

Mix one can club soda with a lttle vegetable oil. This is used to oil the pan.
After oiling the bottom of the pan, alternate layers of phyllo dough (2-3 at a time) with the spinach/cheese mixture, spreading it to cover the phyllo. Top each layer of phyllo with the oil/club soda mix.
Edges of phyllo will over-hang the edge of the pan. After all layers are in place, tuck the edges under. Top with the oil/soda mix and poke holes throughout.

As with any traditional dish, variations are as numerous as there are cooks. One variation that was used for the second pita made was to crumble several (~5) sheets of phyllo into the cheese mixture with half a can of club soda, then proceed with layering as you wish…anything goes!

Bake at 400 degrees approximately 40 minutes. Flip upside down out of pan. Enjoy!

Mediterranean Stuffed Bread- from Joan

Dough

1 cup water
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp honey
2 ½ cups flour
2 Tbsp cornmeal
1 ¼ tsp salt
2 tsp dry yeast

Filling

16 dry-packed sun-dried tomato halves
(soften in boiling water 10 minutes)
¾ cup feta cheese
½ cup black olives, chopped
¼ cup parsley, chopped
¼ cup green onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp olive oil
½ tsp each; dried oregano & basil
¼ tsp each; salt & pepper

Prepare dough in bread machine.
Cover sun-dried tomatoes with boiling water; let stand 10 minutes.
Drain and chop to make ¾ cup. Toss with other filling ingredients.
Remove dough and roll out to 16 x 9 inches. Spread with filling.
Starting at long side, roll up jelly role style. Press seam to seal.
Flatten slightly and pinch ends to seal.
Let rise 10 minutes. Brush with egg diluted with water.
Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

Atole- Warm Mexican Drink- from Susan

Atole- 4 servings
5 cups Milk or water or ½ and ½
½ cup Masa harina (Mexican corn flour)
¼ cup Brown sugar or piloncillo
½ teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Vanilla

1. Whisk the milk or water, masa harina, sugar/ piloncillo and cinnamon in a large saucepan until smooth.
2. Place the saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to stir until thickened, about 5 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla

Fall/Winter Workshops at McNabb Community Centre

BEGINNERS’ WORKSHOP IN SRI LANKAN DANCE

Newcomers Welcome! In Celebration of International Women’s Day  on March 8, 2011 the drop-in fee is waived for newcomers.

We are an inclusive, diverse group and our dances are accessible to all ages and ethnicities.  We call ourselves the “Joie de Vivre Folk Dancers” to indicate our goal: fun, relaxing dancing.  We are committed to building community, workshop by workshop.

To let us know you plan to attend and to receive updates on this and future workshops,  NEWCOMERS should R.S.V.P. to jdvottawa at yahoo.ca.  Coming at the last minute is O.K. too.

Try folk dancing to improve flexibility.  “Move for Health”

All folk dance workshops are from 8:00 to 10:00pm.
Mc Nabb Community Centre, 180 Percy St, corner of Bronson & Gladstone. Fees: $40 for 5 workshops
Drop-in Fee: $10 single class   Note: March 8 only newcomers free.

No perfumes please.  Our events are scent-free.

 

September 28, 2010    Gujarati (western India) with Alpa Shah

October 19, 2010   Peruvian with Bertha Foulkes

January18, 2011   Slovakian with Izabela Matejcekova
February 15, 2011    Croatian with Visnja Beg

March 8, 2011    Sri Lankan with Ruki Gunesekara

Fee  (cash or cheque) is due at the class.  Send an e-mail if you plan to come to jdvottawa at yahoo.ca (link removed to prevent spam).

 

Large parking lot out front. Enter through the centre doors at the top of the ramp.  Turn right for the PreSchool Room.

 

We have a wooden floor! Yeh!!!    Easy on knees, back and hips.

If you can put up our poster at your community centre, church, yoga studio, etc. we would greatly appreciate the publicity help!

International Women’s Day Celebration

Consider celebrating International Women’s Day with the Indo-Canadian community Tejaswini. In their own words, “Tejaswini is a grassroots, volunteers organization to serve Indo Canadian women through education, advocacy and solidarity.”

This event will be held Sunday March 6th, at the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre, 1265 Walkley Road, from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Benefits of dance

Here is an article describing how dancing makes us smarter:

http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm

(Of course we knew that! But is that why we dance?)

Armenian Folk Dance Class is back!

Back by popular demand: Ludwig Bulghadaryan, Director & Choreographer of Karni Dance Ensemble of Montréal, will be in Ottawa Sunday mornings to teach Armenian Dance to interested Adults & Children.

Location: Ararat Armenian School, 181 Donald Street

Everyone is invited to join!  Those who commit will benefit from the many advantages of this wonderful physical activity!  Learning Armenian Dances from the many different regions of Armenia- is a given, but the physical exercise that it provides is amazing!  It’s like working out towards better health, only with beautiful melodies & Armenian beats to motivate you to dance and be part of the group.  Just talk to anyone who danced last season, and you’ll see how much they enjoyed the dance group and the sense of cultural enrichment!

Adults will be asked to pay $20 per month, and children $10 per month.  If and when a parent pays to register for dance, their child(ren) will dance for FREE/at no extra charge.  Please note that our dance schedule runs from October 3rd 2010 – May 29th 2011, 10:30am -12:30pm.
The children’s group dances from 12:30 – 1:00pm.  To facilitate the book keeping this year, we ask that you pay for the first term (Oct. 3rd –Jan. 30th) upon registering.  For adults this means $20/month x 4 months= $80 for the first term.  Starting February, we will ask you to do the same for the second term.

Please contact a sub- committee member for further details:
Marlène Iskedjian:  613-225-4915   Email:  mbakmazian at pharmideas.com
Anna Bedrosyan:  613-822-8699     Email:  nbedrosyan at hotmail.com
Davit Zargarian:  613-761-1940     Email:  zargarian.davit at umontreal.ca

Multicultural Calendar

Here is a really cool calendar for checking out what is being celebrated in cultures of the world: The Multicultural Calendar. What is especially cool about it is the explanation of each event. Check out March 16th- and celebrate the creation of human beings! (hmmmmmm…)

New Fall and Winter Programme!

Stay tuned for the schedule of fantastic folk dance workshops coming this fall and winter. In the works are:

Slovak!

Garba (Gujerati)!

Columbian!

Dabke!

Peruvian!

And our spacious new venue is the McNabb Community Centre at 180 Percy St., very central and with plenty of parking.