If you don't know the Orion, what are you waiting for? You're missing out on a hot trend (of the summer of 1963 in East Germany)!

In our first episode, we explored the story of the Lipsi, a new dance East Germans created in 1958 to compete with Western trends. In this episode, we continue the story by exploring the Orion, the GDR's answer to the twist, as well as some other experiments in international socialist choreographies of the 1960s. Lions and tigers and Orion - Oh my!

Watch our reconstruction of the Orion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkhMTQvoNUQ

Dance Orion yourself with this basic step tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xCRiMkGFUFc

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologists Sydney Hutchinson and Hannah Judd dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, and find more of our dance videos, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International