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“What’s the name of this dance?” and “What’s playing next??”
by Adony and Rebecca Beniares
Next to “How have you been?” the above questions are probably the most common sentences everybody hears while dancing. Since learning the dance name helps people know what to request and knowing what’s up next let’s everybody get ready for their favorite dance, we’ve been working on digital images to help people find the answers on their own.
We have produced over 800 images, composed of the name of the dance, a few interesting items about the dance and a background picture. We chose the positioning of the various elements so that the name of dance is clearly displayed, but doesn’t block the focal point of the image. About two-thirds of the images are either relevant to the dance or from the country the dance is from or based on; the remainder of the images are just pretty.
After you add the images as “album art” to your song in iTunes, Windows Media Player or most other music software, the image associated with each dance will automatically display when you play the song; just hook up a monitor or projector to your computer and run your party; no extra work is needed to key up the image. You can also display your upcoming playlist in a sidebar window next to the image.
We’ve received great feedback from those who have danced at parties and festivals where we’ve used the images. Besides helping people know what is being danced, the images add a bit of color and additional visual interest to the venue.
All images may be used without restriction and we hope people will find both the images and tutorials useful and pretty enough to use during their classes, parties, and events.
Thanks to our friends among the folk dance community who provided a large number of the images for this project. Other images have been downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, with proper attribution as required by the originator. A special thanks to Roberto Bagnoli, who gave us the idea when he was using PowerPoint to display some dance images at Stockton a couple of years ago.
If you’d like additional information, want to provide feedback or corrections to any mistakes or have us make up some images for dances we missed, please email us at beni@pacbell.net.
We’re looking forward to knowing what’s up next at your party.