General: This blog's name

This weekend one of my friends asked me why my blog is called "dansator". He said that he doesn't know what the word means or what it has to do with films. Of course, it was one of my newer friends. My older friends would have known the answer.

Simple googling would have told my friend what "dansator" means. It's the Romanian word for "dancer". To the best of my knowledge the word doesn't exist in other languages. So what does dancing have to do with films? Absolutely nothing! But it has everything to do with me.

In the early 1990's I was a passionate dancer. It must have been 1992 when I started going to clubs on a regular basis. I was going through deep personal problems at the time, and I found my release in dancing. I was (and still am) opposed to drugs for stimulation, but I found that extreme dancing could put me into a trance. I would dance for four to six hours non-stop as energetically as I could, not happy until my body was so weak that I could hardly stand. That was the heyday of German Techno, and the heavy beats were perfect for my style of dancing.

In 1995 I got my first Internet account. I could pick the account name myself, so I picked my personal alias as name, "Sunset Dancer". When I joined IRC chatrooms there was a 9-letter limit, so I shortened this to "Dancer". Over the years I have used different forums, and many people have known me as Dancer without ever learning my real name. I never hid my real name, I would tell it to anyone who asked, but in my opinion "Sunset Dancer" expresses who I am better than "Mike Hood".

The problem with using Dancer as a name is that it's a common word and often it's already taken. For this reason I've frequently used the Romanian word, Dansator, as an alternative. It isn't a coincidence that I picked Romanian. My fascination with vampires was what first made me interested in Romanian culture, but after a short visit to Romania I fell in love with the country and the people. I spent 18 months learning Romanian, but I wasn't able to continue after I left Germany.

This blog might be a film blog, but I never intended it to be a professional blog with meticulously informative reviews. If you want serious reviews you're in the wrong place. My intention is to give my purely subjective impressions of the films I watch. In a way, the blog isn't really about films, it's about me. I use films as an excuse to say something about myself. I'd like to think that my friends who read this blog will recognise me in what I write, and that strangers who read this blog will get an impression of who I am.

And who am I? My name is Dancer. You can call me Dansator.