No willowy belly-dances, no  fiery csardas for this peasant nation. We neither do cancan nor twitch our legs as lithely as the Irish. We dance our polkas ― admittedly it's a dance we are supposed to have borrowed from the Poles ― in a dignified and leisurely fashion. Our dances, particularly the traditional ones recorded by our folklore enthusiasts, are fit to be danced by kids in their early teens and their grandparents side by side, at the same open-air party.

We don't do solo numbers ― we don't have a tradition of stepping inside the circle and impressing all the others with some expert moves. We dance in pairs. "Would the dancers please ask the non-dancers for a turn," is a call often heard at dances.

We sing in choirs and dance in folk dance groups. We have dance groups for children and young people for whom gambolling and romping about is the main thing. There is something mildly erotic in the way middle-aged dancers move and it is a treat to watch old people dance ― they seem to be so forgivingly understanding of any possible human foible.

We are turning back to the kind of dance music played on ancient acoustic instruments: fiddles, bagpipes, accordion and drums. We are turning back to the fundamental idea of dance as balance between the female principle of mystery and the male principle of daring.

Latvian traditional ritual games are quite similar to our dances. Men's games seem quite brutal but anthropologists hasten to assure us that these are echoes from the very distant past when matriarchy ruled the world and men had to show off to compete for female attention. Medieval jousts never reached us but we had our own game tournaments to scout out potential musclemen and propagators of the family line.