Dawn Mazur

There are so many topics I need to blog about (despite being relatively blog productive this week) but I want to share something completely random and a little ridiculous. Stanford (where I went for undergrad) has a really vibrant social dance community (waltz, polka, swing, salsa, etc.) and every year, students organize an all-night dance event. In fact, I was part of the organizing "Gang of 13" many years back. Since this weekend was relatively free, I went and had so much fun at my fourth dancing all-nighter.

The Dawn Mazurka is an old tradition that died out and was resurrected at Stanford Big Dance. It comes from the Polish Mazur, but as several countries conquered Poland in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was adopted and adapted by Russia and the Germanic empires. In any case, after many iterations, one Russian Mazurka Quadrille emerged as the ultimate challenge for 19th century dancers, choreographed by a Charles Durang in 1856. At all-night balls, this complex partnered set dance was done at dawn as the hardest dance when people were most tired. We dance a reconstruction by Richard Powers at around 5AM, and it's fantastic. Then we always follow it with the Chicken Dance.