English Dance and Song Spring 2022
This article appears in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts.
Anne Leach, co-founder of Dance Around The World festival, discusses how getting together to social dance is such an enjoyable and enriching experience, especially in a post-lockdown world.
What does a dance festival look like when the world is just emerging from a pandemic? Here at Dance Around The World, nobody is quite sure – but we’re about to find out.
Of course, compared to the grief and suffering that Covid has wrought on families throughout this country and the world, missing out on social dancing has been a very small price to pay. There’s no doubt, however, that we have never needed the joy and connectedness of dancing together more than we do now.
Dance Around The World is an annual celebration of traditional dance cultures from all over the world. It’s an entirely voluntary event; all the performers, dance teachers and organisers donate their services. They are all passionate about sharing and celebrating traditional dance, and the festival is a richly diverse showcase for all the groups and classes who do so much to foster interest and participation in folk dance.
This year, the festival celebrates its 22nd birthday. It was the original vision of founder Vineet Vijh, a man who trades in visions. Vineet visited our regular international folk dance class late in 1999, asking if we could help him to find performers and dance teachers to take part in a one-day dance festival; he’d already booked the hall for January 2000. Under Vineet’s calm and insightful management, a sizeable group of people connected to various international dance groups performed and taught at the first Dance Around The World festival. After a couple of years, other projects needed Vineet’s magic touch, so a small group of organisers rallied to take over and develop the festival into the two-day event that now fills Cecil Sharp House in London every year.
The festival provides a continuous programme of performances and taster workshop classes; it’s an ideal opportunity to try out something new. Of course, EDS readers are an especially highly experienced and knowledgeable bunch, but it’s perfectly possible that, even amongst this specialised readership, there are people who do not dance much or at all.
It’s sometimes hard for us to remember that most people don’t dance. Social dancing has undergone a sea change since the days of our – or, at least, my – grandparents’ generation, when learning to dance was part of growing up. Everyone learnt a little bit, sometimes at classes but sometimes just at home.
Dance Around The World will next take place at Cecil Sharp House on 29 & 30 October 2022.
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