Talk:Polska (dance)

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The current version of this article make it sound like sixteenth-note polska equals slängpolska, which I hardly think is correct. Rather I suppose slängpolska is a version of sixteenth-note polska. / Habj 14:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

There are many slängpolska, some sixteenth-note, some triplets (like Slängpolska från Västerbotten), and some are not even pair dances (e.g., Slängpolska från Vikbolandet is for two pairs). However, the most common type of slängpolsa is usually referred to simply as "slängpolska" (although I believe it also has a longer name indicating the region it comes from). I heard that "slängpolska" originally just meant that it contains fast rotation (indeed one of the turns in the "common" slängpolska is a fast rotation). Also, I woudn't say it's that similar to salsa or swing. It has some resemblance since the dancers usually only touch each other in their hands, you dance on one spot rather than in a circle, and it is composed of several tours improvised in sequence, but the pace and "mood" are very different - much less extrovert and perhaps more beautiful than playful. --130.243.176.249 22:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed an earlier comment of mine that was no longer pertinent.Cpgruber 18:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Writer's notes: The term "polska" is not typically capitalized in Scandinavian langauges. Even to the point that a polska from a particular village is not capitalized--for example, the polska danced in the village of Boda is written out as "bodapolska" without capitalization. An editor went through and capitalized Polska throughtout the article. I will thnk about this for a couple of days, but probably go back through and revert to the Scandinavian usage.

The plural of "polska" is "polskor" in Swedish and plurals are formed similarly in other Scandinavian languages. In this case, however, I have preferred to use the circumlocution "polska dances." Attempting to use the Scandinavian form in the middle of an Engliah text sounds strange and incorrect, no matter how many years you have heard it.

There has been a request for sources. I will try to come up with some. Yet this is a folk tradition and almost everything is passed down orally from person to person and teacher to student. There are scholarly works, but very few, all available only in the local language and most occuring as dissertations or in other forms that are very narrow in focus and not widely available. Nor am I a scholar or anything more than a committed amateur in this area. I have played the music (fiddle) and dance the dances (mostly Swedish) for over 15 years, attend workshops in the US and Scandinavia amounting to 4 or more weeks a year. The people I learn from are either current tradiation bearers (in the music) or the current master teachers (dance) who learned directly from the scholars who did the original dance research in the 1950's and 1960's. I am confident that even those with a far stronger background than mine would find the current gloss to be acceptable.Cpgruber 18:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * If you have not already done so, please take note of the discussion at RFF, in which I commented about the capitalisation of proper nouns and queried what the local usage was. But ultimately, even though I am - in principle - open to the idea of respecting local usage, this is the English Wikipedia and the MOS acknowledges the importance of proper English usage in these circumstances, be that British, American, or whatever. I think you are right about the plural usage; I would either pick your choice of "polska dances" or perhaps use polskor if it was italicised (as is conventional with foreign terms) and clarified upon (or prior to) its first occurrence. But again, the consensus tends to prefer minimising foreign terms where practical. This article is an interesting excercise in dealing with mixed languages. Adrian   M. H.  19:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much MHA! I will work on this intermittantly. Hope you may check again some time this summer. I have looked through other Wikipedia dance references and found that the names of dances are not capitalized, at least at the broadest level where they refer to a class of dances--for example, see entries for "waltz" and "tango." Even when made particularl to a subclass the stay lower case, for example "Finnish tango" or Viennese waltz". Only when unique dance is named is the word capitalized, for example "Eva's Waltz" as the name of a specific tune or a specific choreography. But that is a minor quibble. I have also now figured out how to use RFF and reviewed your comments there. I see I have my work cut out for me. I accept the charge!Cpgruber 15:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the added external links. They add a lot! I note the link of Jeanette Eriksson playing slangpolska. It is very nice and the fact that it comes from tvfolk suggests that she is a recognized talent in the area. However, as the only such link (and the only "footnote") it seems odd. I suggest leaving it in for now, but then looking to replace it with a more coherent and complete set of examples. For Sweden I suggest Pelle Bjornlert for 16th note, Pers Hans Olsson for 8th note [both have tvfolk video), and the Lasse Sorlin, Richard Näslin, Kjelle Erik Eriksson or one of the Andersson brothers from Foellinge for triplet [I saw no Jämtland fiddlers on tvfolk which seems wrong to me). For Norway perhaps Tore Bolsadt for Valdress and Sven Nyhus (or Brekkinge Spelmanslag) for Rorospols. I sm not sure who to suggest for Telespringar and Hallingspringar.Cpgruber 18:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Removed a sentence/paragraph on minuets that had been added to the opening section as 1) minuets were already mentioned later in the article, 2) the addition mentioned only Finland while the minuet is danced in both Finland and Denmark and 3) the tone/style seemed parenthical/informal and so not great in the opening section.Plskmn 20:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Reverted edit that had included a loose list of other folk dances from Sweden. Since this article is narrowly about polskas, putting such a list in the body seemed innappropriate. In the final "See also" section there are many other articles where such dances are discussed. In particular, see perhaps "gammaldans" which document hambo, waltz, schottis, snoa, and mazurka. Several others on the list were actually forms of "polska" and mentioned elsewhere in the article, again making the separate listing seem innappropriate.Plskmn (talk) 05:15, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Several of the edits of 17 April seem "off point". The pronunciation of polska, for example, doesn't make a point relevent to the content and breaks up the presentation. The point about the Polish meaning of the word, while interesting, seems a bit obscure and, at a minimum, would seem to need some citation to justify inclusion in this article (i.e., it seems like a loose "personal insight" rather something backed by historical or scholarly evidence). Similarly, the comment about stressing beat 1 in the hambo, while true for the hambo, 1) appears in a paragraph that does not discuss how beats are stressed, concerns a dance that grew out of but is not really in the family of polska dances and 3) opens, at an inappropriate time and without development a topic that is pretty complex. I'll wait a day or so to see if anyone has other comment, but am then likely to revert these points.Plskmn (talk) 17:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Stressing beat 1 is a very common error. A change the music to a hambo so it belongs to this article. --Dala11a (talk) 23:13, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, Yes, stressing the first beat does change things. It is particularly a problem with boda polskas which are probably the closest to hambo if one looks solely at written notes. You definitely can go very wrong there with even a minor movement of the stress. However, there are other true polska(s) where a subtler kind of stress is placed on beat one--for example, the slangpolska from Småland or southeast Sweden which, although it is generally described as 'smooth' does have a stress and occasionally a lengthing of the first beat, often on the first of the paired measures and then even more so as a phrase is introduced or repeated. The point is that at the place the comment was inserted, the article was not focused on the stress applied to beats. And already the article is probably far too narrow and technical for an 'encyclopedia' type presentation. And I say that as the primary author. So I do think that plunging back in and trying to plug up all the narrowish distinctions is probably a bad idea? Let's continue the conversation a bit before being too adamant about what goes in or stays in? For example, I did not revert your edits, merely called attention to the problems that I noted.Plskmn (talk) 00:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dala11a. Thanks for the additions! Do you have access to the writings of Invar Normasson or the Karlholms? Or to any of the various books put out by the Ungdomsringen with the descriptions of the deances? It would be reaally much better for the article if some of the statements made could be linked to these kinds of authorities. Both you and I appear to be writing pretty much off the cuff, basing our views on conversations we may have had with teachers or other dancers. I'd certainly appreciate our putting in citations of actual written documents that could give things a better grounding.

My edits were, for the most part, just putting things in a bit more readable form. The only thing I reverted was where I changed your "in parts of Sweden" back to "with few execeptions. To say "in parts of Sweden" means, in English usage, the same as "while polska tradition disappeared in some places it continued in most of the country." I do not think that is true as I am only aware of Boda in Dalarna and--somewhat controversially--perhaps Foellinge in Jaemtland as villages where dances have existed continuously to the present day. Perhaps there was some part of the meaning of "wtih few exceptions" that troubled you and you wanted to replace. Let's talk it over here before rewriting or reverting that element? Plskmn (talk) 14:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have access to almost all books where Ingvar Norman is one of the editors. The dance descriptions Beskrivning av Svenska Folkdanser II are sold by Svenska Folkdansringen  www.folkdansringen.se.   His collection of more than 2000 printed music is still sold by Ann-Christine Östlund Bäckehag a relative to him in Sweden(they include no description of how to dance). What specific details are you thinking about when you write  "could be linked to these kinds of authorities"? --Dala11a (talk) 15:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello, folks. As it has obviously been many years since the discussion was had, and I fear it will be as many more until this comment is read (if ever), I wonder if you'll permit me to share with you a fact you may (or may not) find insightful (though not necessarily helpful, per se (and yes, I *will* now stop with the paranthetics (yes, that's an intentionally-made-up word - I say that as one never knows around here (OK, so I lied about stopping (a little))))): in normal Polish usage, adjectival forms deriving from proper nouns are *NOT* capitalized. That is, when referring to, say, "Polska" in Polish - as in, "Poland", the noun - then it remains capitalized as in common usage in English. However, unlike with the English "a Polish girl", in Polish, the equivalent expression would appear as "dziewczyna polska". (Well (and here I apologize for making the lie even worse), the fact is that such a phrase would actually almost never be seen, as instead, in Polish one would almost certainly instead refer to a "Polka [młoda]" - as in, "a [young] Polish female", rather than using the somewhat stiff phrase I offered earlier. And we certainly need not dwell on this preferred usage's similarity (as it were) to the (English (and elsewhere)) title of another well-known (though not necessarily Scandinavian) dance. Is this worth poring over? Nope.) However, back in Serious-World, if we are to accept the hypothesis that the dances are indeed the influence of the Polish aristocratic court, then perhaps it's not much of a further effort to consider that this rather idiosyncratic orthographic fact may well have played a part in the lack of capitalization as seen throughout Scandinavia in the name of this article's eponymous dance. Just a thought. All the best. Fabulous discussions, all around. Pimpoosh (talk) 02:00, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 4 November 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus that the dance is the primary topic. No consensus defaults to the status quo, which also means the redirect will be changed to point to Poland again. Jenks24 (talk) 14:47, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Polska (dance) → Polska – There is the only English meaning for the word "Polska", so no need for disambig in title. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC) Staszek Lem (talk) 01:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. Natg 19 (talk) 01:46, 12 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Support per nom's sound rationale. Polska already redirects here. --Cavarrone 17:37, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It didn't redirect here until recently. It redirected to Poland for over four years until the nominator changed it and was a disambiguation page before that. —  AjaxSmack   23:56, 7 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose until the nom and User:Cavarrone address the issue of the Polska (disambiguation) page and supply evidence that the dance is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Poland was the de facto primary topic until a few days ago.  A cursory Google search of "Polska" reveals only one hit for the dance among the top 50 (the Wikipedia article).  Note also that there are a number of other pages beginning with "Polska".  —  AjaxSmack   23:56, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Are you telling us that Polska has other meanings in English language? In what dictionary did you find that "Polska" means "Poland" in English? The disambiguation page is nonsense. I did not notice it and I am putting it for deletion. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:50, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not telling anything. You're supposed to do that in the nomination.  I just noticed none of the top 50 Google hits for "Polska" is about dance except the Wikipedia article.  It strains credulity that this would be the case if the dance was/were indeed the primary topic.  Cf. Deutschland which is not the English name for Germany but which redirects to Germany even though there are many other meanings of "Deutschland" in English.  Ditto for Italia, Sverige, and a host of others.  Even though Polska is not the English name for Poland, it is still probably "much more likely than any other topic...to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term".  —  AjaxSmack   16:55, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment I think I found what happened here: someone copied a bunch of tables from Polish-language sources and was lazy to busily replace country names. As a result, e.g., Japonia is ridiculously linked to ski jumpers. I have already cleaned up "Polska" but there are more ski-jumping countries left. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:31, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:ASTONISH. I had no idea this was a dance and would expect Polska to be a redirect to Poland. I also think the recent change of that redirect from Poland to the dance should be reverted as controversial/undiscussed. Number   5  7  09:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.