Balfolk Auckland

Monday was Anzac Day in New Zealand, so we marked the day with a cup of tea and some Anzac biscuits after a great evening of dance.

Started the evening with a Menuet en promenade and the Newcastle Circle to get us warmed up. Then spent the bulk of the evening working on two new exercises:

Revisiting a choreographed Reinlender routine that we looked at some time ago. A bit challenging, hopefully we’ll come back to it over the next little while and bed it in;
Continuing with the Avant deux à Coutant, a fast footwork dance from the Poitou-Charentes region devised in the late 19th century by Albert Coutant, a traditional fiddler from the region. Here is a clip of it in a Balfolk context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmRl9fwuhAM

For interest, there is also a Cajun version of the tune by Michael Doucet, which he called “Avant deux de Poitou”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OckB_4NF9VM

We closed out the evening with a rousing rendition of Redwing.

Looking forward to dance tomorrow.

Michael Doucet - Topic 8 likes. "Potpourri Cadjin"

Morena Auckland Balfolks,

It was a such a fun evening of dance last Monday night. We made real progress on the valse, learned a completely new dance - Avant-Deux à Coutant - and revisited Bo***ée d’Aurore Sand, a particularly lovely dance from the early C20th.

It was super to have a good blend of beginners and experienced dancers last evening, although we still need to address the issue of how to find an opportunity for experienced dancers to continue to advance in their dancing and to learn some more complex dances, while still making class welcoming and accessible to beginners. Perhaps having two hour-long classes - Beginners, followed by Intermediate - with the opportunity of Intermediate dancers participating in the Beginners class for free. We invite other suggestions and we will keep you posted on thoughts and responses.

From Monday evening, here is a link to a reasonable rendition of Avant-deux à Coutant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUE-QP2Jvb8

And here is a lovely iteration of Bo***ée d’Aurore Sand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lpwe27wrwg

You will find many slightly different versions of this dance on YouTube, but this, despite the quality of the footage, I think is the most nicely danced.

Hope you all are having a great week.

Kind regards

Michael

Raymic81 34 likes, 1 comment. "Bo***ée d'Aurore Sand ; Vidéo 1"

Morena Auckland Balfolks,

It’s been wonderful over the past couple of weeks to see some new faces at Balfolk. It was a great opportunity to introduce a new dance (or one we have only looked at once before) so that we were all coming in at the same level of familiarity. You all did superbly with the Valse á 5 temps and I was delighted how you all managed to find the swing in those lovely tunes.

Here are a couple of popular Valse á 5 temps tunes so that you can continue to get familiar with this new rhythm.
Cinco tempoush by Trio Loubelya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pmXei-u3D4&list=RD2pmXei-u3D4&start_radio=1
Tuur by La Boutines Artistiques
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tuur+la+boutines+artistiques
Valse toi meme by Bal O’Gadjo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=841EBWlcn28&list=RD841EBWlcn28&start_radio=1

I mentioned at the end of class the wonderful film that Roger and I saw called Hungarian Wedding. Here is the trailer for the film, and as you can see there is a strong focus on dance there.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hungarian+wedding+trailer
One of the dances not shown in the trailer is a partner dance called Mezőségi.
Here is a clip of a couple performing this dance in traditional costume.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Dzxgt2s7k
What the film trailer also doesn’t show is the Balfollk-like Coda. This popular revival in Hungarian dance is called Tànchàz, and here is the short trailer for a documentary about this movement, which is contemporaneous with Balfolk, and shares many characteristics.
Tànchàz documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJnJoxScUM

And here, just because it looks like so much fun, is Mezőségi being danced in London at a Tànchàz event there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsCz9HBOs9E

As mentioned, I will be in Dunedin for two weeks working with Kate, so do come along and support Claire and Daniel as they lead Balfolk for the next couple of Mondays.

Kind regards
Michael

Hungarian Folk Dance in London | Táncház Londonban! 2014 Hungarian "táncház" in London, UK. Organizer: HUNique Dance and HC&HS Hungary. 08-02-2014

Morena Auckland Balfolks,

It’s great to be back dancing on Monday evenings. We have been underway for a couple of weeks and classes are going well with a combination of regulars and newcomers.

This Monday we revisited the Bo***ée du Velay, a 3 temps bo***ée with a nice pattern of movement in the 2nd part. As well as mastering the pattern of the dance, we also looked at a new way of dancing the 3 temps rhythm that is very useful for dances like this one that require a certain ease of locomotion to allow them to be fully realised. I thought I would share a video of this dance so that you could get a visual image of the lightness of this particular way of dancing the bo***ée.

In this video, from Gennetines 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YA2BQyZ8-U&t=556s our particular version of the dance can be found at 6:58.

Notice, how light and agile this stepping allows the dancing to be; and because of this the pattern of the dance is open and spacious, whereas ours tends to be a little constrained and congested. We will continue to explore this manner of dancing the bo***ée.

We also looked a simple under-arm turn for valse, that can be inserted both in Valse Magique, but also anywhere in your dancing of a free valse. The newbies this week did a good job as they had to contend both the basic valse figure, as well as learning the under-arm turn for the Passenger. The ease with which the regulars learned the new figure was a reassuring confirmation of how well you have integrated the basic valse figure. Bien fait tout le monde.

Till next week

Kind regards

Michael

Gran Bal d'Europe 2007- Les bo***ées à 3 temps du Velay Gran Bal d'Europe 2007- Les bo***ées à 3 temps du Velay