Good news is in the air; meanwhile let’s continue dancing, learning and getting together online…
This Thursday, on 10 December, we’ll meet online for a workshop with Koen Dhondt from Frisse Folk. This workshop is intended for dancers, but may also be of interest to musicians who play for dancing – read down! After the workshop we’ll continue on with our Eurosession to play tunes, enjoy dancing and see some friendly faces. NB. Please note the earlier starting time.
Times:
7:30 – 9:00 pm GMT – Dance workshop
9:00 – 11:00 pm GMT – Eurosession
Session Access and Donations:
To keep our Zoom sessions friendly and secure, we ask participants to provide their name and email contact, and make a minimum payment of £2. We invite participants who enjoy our sessions to make a donation of around £5, or to offer £10 if you’re able to help us to support musicians and dance teachers with fair payments for their time. You can pay/donate via our dedicated donations page at https://eurosession.org.uk/?p=3233 and you will then be directed to the Zoom details.
If you plan to share a tune, it may sound better if you turn on the Original Sound feature in your Zoom settings before the session.
About the Workshop: ‘Musicality in your Dance’
Are you ready to explore how musical subtleties might inspire you to become more creative in your dancing…?
In December, we are looking forwards to a workshop entitled ‘Musicality in your Dance’ with Koen Dhondt of Frisse Folk.
Thursday’s experiential workshop will provide opportunities to identify to patterns and subtleties in the music, including aspects of musical structure such as patterns, rhythms, and styles, as well as interesting features such as syncopation, tension and improvisation. You will then have opportunities to improvise your own subtle dance variations in connection with these musical features.
This will be a great chance to engage your mind in listening carefully, and to tune into the music with your dance and your body, to create a wonderful harmonious experience. No previous musical knowledge, dance experience or dance partners are required.
Update: During the workshop, we will dance to a schottische called New Pneus played by Mister Klof. Get ready with the first 2 minutes of their video on Youtube!
Koen Dhondt has been dancing since age eleven and teaching folk dance classes in Brussels since 2002. He was a founding member of Frisse Folk, a folk dance school with a team of teachers who teach classes all over Belgium. Koen teaches with attention to detail and humour to ensure a pleasant learning experience. He also also studies tango and performs modern dance, and organises dance bals and is a folkDJ with a passion for creating high quality evenings of joy.
Please join promptly by 7:30pm GMT to participate in the workshop.
Tips for enjoying the evening
The rest of the evening should provide the same experience as the our previous virtual sessions – marvellous musicians, delicious dancing, and a bit of chatting. Here are some tips for maximum enjoyment:
Everyone:
You can switch views in Zoom between one musician and all participants using the option at top right (for help see How-Do-I-Change-The-Video-Layout. Please mute your audio when you are not speaking / leading the music, and use the Chat feature for background communication. There are also likely to be intermissions for general chat and catching up.
Musicians:
In our sessions we play tunes for dancing, prioritising dances from the balfolk scene and other traditional genres from across Europe (preferably not English and Irish, because we have plenty of those in other local sessions!).
In the Zoom sessions, only one person (or device) can broadcast at any one time; if you want to play a tune then put a note in the chat about the genre of dance you’ll be playing for – this will help the session organisers to figure out a running order. A few of our session regulars will be on hand to get the music going.
When you’ve been chosen to lead, it’s helpful to let the dancers know about the dance type you’ll be playing, then select Original Sound (top left) when you want to play, and turn it off again for normal voice transmission.
Dancers:
Get your dance shoes on; if you have a danceable space, book it for the evening, You can attempt to dance the right genre of dance at the right time (albeit half a beat behind!). More important is to dance as though no-one is watching, or as though you can cheer up everyone else who is watching! Or turn your video off if you feel freer dancing in private.
Eurosession is an inclusive and caring space for all.
Invite your co-space-sharing mates / family / teddy-bear along if appropriate 🙂
See you soon,
xx Eurosesh