Thoughts on Green Mountain Ketri-Ketri and Nina's Dance

There are many circle dances to songs that express a wistful, peaceful but poignant reconcilliation to, or moving beyond, past or present suffering. To the dances listed above I could add Perpetual Motion and Heart like a fire and osou varoun to sidera in this category. But let's take one at a time ...

Green Mountain Ketri-Ketri

The dance (I haven't yet traced the choreographer) is to the song “De cara a la pared” sung by Lhasa de Sela on the 1997 album “La Llorona”. Of Mexican-American origin, she developed her singing in Greece and then Canada into a truly haunting sound. She died on January 3rd 2010. Here are the words:

De cara a la pared

   

Crying face to the wall

Llorando
de cara a la pared
se apaga la ciudad
 
Crying
Face to the wall
The city turns off
Llorando
Y no hay màs
muero quizas
Adonde estàs?
 
Crying
And there is no more
Maybe I die
Where are you?
Soñando
de cara a la pared
se quema la ciudad
 
Dreaming
Face to the wall
The city burns down
Soñando
sin respirar
te quiero amar
te quiero amar
 
Dreaming
Without breathing
I want to love you
I want to love you
Rezando
de cara a la pared
se hunde la ciudad
 
Praying
Face to the wall
The city sinks
Rezando
Santa Maria
 
Praying
Saint Mary

Nina's Dance

The choreography is by Brenda Kelley and the song is “Os Argonautas” (the Argonauts) by the Brazillian composer and singer Caetano Veloso. (I don't know who the singer is on the version used for the dance.) It is built around the phrase “Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso” — Navigating is necessary (or “precise”), living is not — a phrase with a long and winding history (see below).

This song is gentle, but with a more up-beat feel, the words at first evoking the journey of the Argonauts in greek mythology: a heroic band sailing through one peril after another in the boat “The Argo” in quest of a golden ram's fleece guarded by a dragon. But in the last verse the ship becomes a car and the imagery shifts to city life as in De cara a la pared. The ending is dark and tragic, but in the circle dance version the singer maintains the same tone of peaceful acceptance, of death as of life.

 

Os Argonautas

   

The Argonauts

O barco, meu coração não aguenta
Tanta tormenta, alegria
Meu coração não contenta
O dia, o marco, meu coração, o porto, não
 
    The ship, my heart cannot handle it
Such torment, happiness
My heart is discontented
The day, the limit, my heart, the port, no
Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso
Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso
 
Navigating is necessary, living is not
O barco, noite no céu tão bonito
Sorriso solto perdido
Horizonte, madrugada
O riso, o arco, da madrugada
O porto, nada
 
The ship, night in the beautiful sky
The free smile, lost
Horizon, morning dawn
The laugh, the arc, of morning
The port, nothing
Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso
Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso
 
Navigating is necessary, living is not
O barco, o automóvel brilhante
O trilho solto, o barulho
Do meu dente em tua veia
O sangue, o charco, barulho lento
O porto silêncio
 
The ship, the brilliant automobile
The free track, the noise
Of my tooth in your vein
The blood, the swamp, slow soft noise
the port — silence
Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso
Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso
 
Navigating is necessary, living is not

Note on the chorus

The phrase “Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso” originates from the book Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch (ca. 46—120 CE). Writing in Greek, in the Life of Pompey he described how the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (a.k.a. Pompey, 106BCE—48BCE), when in charge of procuring food for the state, was about to set sail from Africa with a cargo of grain, when a storm blew up and the sailors were unwilling to set sail. Pompey, however, “led the way on board and ordered them to weight anchor, crying with a loud voice ‘To sail is necessary; to live is not’“ (Πλειν αναγκη, ζην ουκ αναγκη)[1]. Of course Pompey, if he had said this at all, would have said it in Latin. Plutarch's Lives were translated piecemeal into Latin from the late fourteenth century[2] when this saying became “Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse” (‘navigare’ then having the sense of ‘sailing’).

Thereafter a variety of heroically minded people and organisations adopted it as their moto (e.g. Benito Mussolini in 1920). It found its way into Portugese through the writing of the poet Fernando Pessoa (1888—1935) as “Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso”, where “navegar” now means “navigate” and “preciso” ambiguously means both “precise” and “necessary”.

[1] Plutarch's Lives (Loeb Classical Library), London: Heineman, 1917, p. 246
[2] Weiss, R. “Greek in Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages” and “Lo studio di Plutarco nel Trecento” in Medieval and Humanist Greek, Padua, 1977, pp. 3-12 and pp. 204-226.

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