Klezmonauts at the Globe

I like Klezmer music, Jewish folk music from Eastern Europe, so the promise of a ten piece klezmer band with dancing at the Globe was not to be missed.
When I got to the Globe, the band (all dressed in variations on orange and black) were still having their dinner, but we soon went downstairs, where all the seating had been cleared back to make room for the dancing.
It started off simply, just holding hands and walking round in a circle - but it quickly got more complicated than that. One fun dance was supposed to be a line of drunken sailors staggering back to their ship! There was a little boy there, with an "I-don't-want-to-be-here" face, who was persuaded up for the first dance and resolutely sat out the rest - and then it was "I don't want to be here - and what are all these mad grown-ups doing?"
Having a good time, is what.
I had a chat with the leader of the dances in the interval, and it turned out that we'd met before, at a Transition Towns event. He lives in Machynlleth, but he's involved in renovating a polytunnel at Baskerville Hall in Clyro. The Hall has been very helpful, apparently, even providing the volunteers with a mobile home. He was planning to tour the area by bus and bike the next day, going up to Capel-y-ffin and ending up at Abergavenny.
The second half was a mix of music and storytelling, and the storyteller also told us about his recent trip to Poland, which inspired him to write a klezmer tune - he went to Cracow to discover his roots, and told us that, in 1939, there were 68,000 practicing Jews in Cracow - now there are just 38. He described the tune, though, as 'life-affirming', despite the shadow of the Holocaust.