Sidmouth Folk Festival is all over for another year, and I am very pleased with how the Irish set dancing went.
Workshops
On Saturday afternoon we had four sets of dancers of very mixed abilities for an introduction to Irish Set Dancing. We went over some basic moves and steps to give new dancers a feel for it.
On Monday to Thursday afternoons I started with some step practice, then taught a set each day. During the week we covered mostly traditional dances; the Monaghan, Fermanagh and Freres Nantes sets. On Thursday we finished with a recently written dance, the Old Mill Lancers set. The attendance was very good, with about 5 sets each day. There was a mixture of new dancers and very experienced set dancers, together with quite a few people who do set dancing a few times a year at folk festivals, but not at all for the rest of the year.
Ceili
On Thursday evening the wind picked up, the rain came in, and we moved a few hundred yards up the road to St Theresa’s Church Hall for the ceili and our finale of the week. Six sets of people braved the weather to join us, and it was well worth it. We danced all the workshop sets from the week, plus some other well known dances. During the first half of the evening the wind blew the curtains around, and one of the stewards was kept busy mopping up the rainwater coming in through the fire door, which was open to let in more air. None of this put the dancers off! At half time we enjoyed ice creams and cups of tea and coffee. Then it was back to more dancing, in calmer weather conditions.All in all, it was a very enjoyable week, with good numbers of people for the classes and ceili, and I hope they all enjoyed it too. Now I am waiting to see if the Sidmouth Folk Festival committee ask me back again for 2020! Here are the dates for 2020 – Sidmouth Folk Festival 2020Maggie Daniel
