5th-7th March was the weekend that two spectacular dance events took place in the UK. The first was the University of Reading’s first ever dance show; the second was the 59th annual inter-varsity folk dance festival. The first was advertised all over Reading and was attended by hundreds of guests from all over Berkshire. The second was a little-known, fascinating eclipse of cultures which was invitation by word of mouth mainly. This latter one incorporated presentations, dance classes, folk forums and music workshops with a range of styles, taught by experienced dancers from all over Europe and further afield, with a special emphasis on the dance and music traditions of Northeast England, as it was held in Durham this year.
The best attended sessions focussing on the Northeast were the ‘Northumbrian ceilidh’, with lots of reels, communal singing and foot stamping, and ‘songs from the mines’, including tales about mining disasters, death and blacklegs (men who abandoned their friends by crossing the picket lines during the mining strikes in the 1970s and 1980s), all of which were sung with an insistence on the adoption of a (fake) County Durham accent.
The festival was organised extremely well with each day split into three sections –morning workshops, afternoon performances and evening to late-night ceilidhs and barn-dances. There were over thirty workshops to choose from, divided into six streams, including one stream which provided experienced dancers with the skills to set up their own folk dancing society in their local university, one music or singing session in each time slot, and the rest concentrating on different styles and types of ethnically diverse folk dance. These varied from the extremely complicated and aptly-named ‘dances for the braves’, a style perfected in North America, to the relatively simple and incredibly energetic Greek dances.
Each workshop was held in close proximity to the others, rendering changing between streams not only possible but fantastically easy. All the workshops were hands-on and taught by professional dancers who have formed a dance instruction club in their local areas. They managed to explain even the most gruelling dance concisely and plainly and were keen to involve everyone who attended their sessions, regardless of each participator’s level of folk experience. They were also keen to ensure that everyone had a great time and thus the only necessary precursor to each session was that people were willing to get fully engaged and have a great time.
Due to the nature of the festival, dancing took place from the early morning till long into the night, with lots of hopping, clogging and shaking until every exhausted festival-goer toddled off to either their comfy hotel or to ‘camp’ in large church halls. The experience alone of camping with hundreds of strangers who had spent a day whirling and had no access to a shower was certainly ‘interesting’! Still the camaraderie between students across the country who shared nothing but an interest in folk and a positive attitude was fantastic and definitely repeatable.
The next Inter-Varsity Folk Dancing Festival takes place at the University of Bristol from 25th to 27th February 2011 and is expected to be even more exhilarating, action-packed and unmissable than this year’s as it also marks the festival’s diamond jubilee. Reservations for groups and individuals are open now from http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~phkrh/Rag/ivfdf2011/.
No comments:
Post a Comment