Saman Dance: A Thousand Hands Dance

Novermber 2008. Scarsdale Middle School, 7th grade; collaborating teachers: Melissa Zeiler, Cheryl Orlandi.

For almost 2 weeks, students in the Middle School learned a special dance from Indonesia called the Saman Dance, or the Thousand Hands dance. This dance comes from Aceh, one of the 300 ethnic groups in Indonesia. Aceh is the region that was worst hit by tsunami in December 2004. Saman is a group dance that requires a lot of hand movements while sitting down. The dance is originally performed during important community celebrations in Aceh, but has now become a regular top dance in many Indonesian cultural performances. 

Students found this dance very unique and they quickly learned all the basic patterns, the rhythmic movements, and the quickened tempos of the dance in just a few lessons.