Grapeviners spread love of folk dance

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Andi Kapplin leads the Sarasota Grapeviners Folk Dance group as they celebrate World Dance Day at the John Chidsey Bayfront Community Center on April 29. The music and dances were hand picked by the members and featured selections from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, Israel, Croatia, and Turkey. The group meets every Wednesday until August. For more information visit:   http://ifdsarasota.webs.com/   (Staff photo by Nick Adams)

Andi Kapplin leads the Sarasota Grapeviners Folk Dance group as they celebrate World Dance Day at the John Chidsey Bayfront Community Center on April 29. The music and dances were hand picked by the members and featured selections from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, Israel, Croatia, and Turkey. The group meets every Wednesday until August.  (Staff photo by Nick Adams)

SARASOTA

Susan Barach had never taken a dance class in her life when, one week after arriving in Sarasota, she showed up for a regular session of the Sarasota Grapeviners International Folk Dance group.

She didn’t know a soul. The music and the steps — from Israel, Croatia, Bulgaria and other places just as far-flung — were completely foreign to her. And her husband, who has since offered to be first in line if anyone ever develops a “rhythm transplant,” refused to go along.

After her first visit, Barach recalled thinking “I’ll never get these steps.” But, drawn more by the encouragement she received than a belief in her ability, she returned the following week. And again the week after that. And so on.

Fifteen years later, you can still find Barach on the center’s smooth wood dance floor every Wednesday night. But now she wears high-arched, split-soled dance sneakers and sports a button that reads “Susan, Dancing Fool!” She has come to love the dancing, of course, but maybe just slightly less than the camaraderie.

“People say we’re a real friendly bunch,” she says. “And it’s true. We have a good time.”

Judy Merkt, who until a recent diversion into ballroom dancing never missed a Wednesday night either, agrees.

“It’s the largest, most welcoming and well-run folk dance group in Florida,” she says, pausing slightly before adding — “at least in our humble opinion.”

Merkt showed up eight years ago, looking for something to get her out of the house after her husband’s death. She’d never had a dance lesson either, but she “took to it right away.

Delores Lustig, on the other hand, started dancing in Chicago 28 years ago, after her youngest child graduated from high school, but when she moved to Sarasota in 2003 as a recent widow, there was another reason she was lured to the floor.

The Sarasota Grapeviners Folk Dance group celebrates World Dance Day at the John Chidsey Bayfront Community Center on April 29. The music and dances were hand picked by the members and featured selections from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, Israel, Croatia, and Turkey. The group meets every Wednesday. For more information visit:   http://ifdsarasota.webs.com/   (Staff photo by Nick Adams)

The Sarasota Grapeviners Folk Dance group celebrates World Dance Day at the John Chidsey Bayfront Community Center on April 29. The music and dances were hand picked by the members and featured selections from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, Israel, Croatia, and Turkey. The group meets every Wednesday. (Staff photo by Nick Adams)

“The best part is, you don’t need a partner,” says Lustig, who also dances Scottish, contra, English Country Folk and line dances and has been known to be on one dance floor or another five nights a week.

Grapeviners’ sessions start at 7 p.m., with an hour of instruction to introduce new dances that are repeated for three weeks, giving beginners a chance to acclimate. That’s followed by a 60- to 90-minute planned playlist created from members’s requests and referred to by those in the know as “ethnic aerobics.” Everybody gets a break during the month of September, as they await the return of the seasonal snowbirds.

Yes, the regulars all admit, the age range of the group skews “older.” But not because they’re exclusionary. For the mere $6 price of admission, younger participants are not only invited butt are guaranteed an especially enthusiastic welcome.

“I guess in a way you could say it’s a dying art,” says Andi Kapplin, the fifth teacher the group has had since it began 25 years ago. “When we get a 50-year-old, we say, ‘Oh my gosh, a young one!’ ”

Kapplin, a Jacksonville native who has danced since she was 8, drives down from Tampa to teach each week, except during the summer months, which she spends in British Columbia. Though a polished performer and former competitive dancer herself, she says her class is not about perfecting an art but preserving good health and a vibrant tradition.

“This addresses the physical, the mental the social and the emotional,” says Kapplin. “It addresses everything.”

As for Barach, whose two goals in retirement were “to exercise and to volunteer,” the group has become a catalyst for both. Not only is she now the Grapeviner’s coordinator and treasurer, she also line dances, does Jazzercise three times a week and has five volunteer positions, from driving cancer patients to appointments to cuddling the babies of teen mothers.

INTERESTED?

The Sarasota Grapeviners International Folk Dance group meets every Wednesday (except September) from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the John Chidsey Bayfront Community Center, 803 N. Tamiami Trail. $6. For more information, call 923-3302 or go to go to ifdsarasota.webs.com

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Carrie Seidman

Carrie Seidman has been a newspaper features writer, columnist and reviewer for 30 years...and a dancer for longer than that. She has a master's degree from Columbia University Journalism School and is a former competitive ballroom dancer. Contact her via email, or at (941) 361-4834. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.
Last modified: May 4, 2015
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