BATON ROUGE INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCERS
NEWSLETTER
FALL/WINTER 2012
Another BRIFD calendar year is about to close and it is time to get ready for the next one. I assume this next coming year won’t be an unlucky one since it is 2013 but we can all work hard to make it a fun one dancing wise whatever happens. And least we forget some of the fun times we had during the last part of 2012, here are a few reminders of what happened.
By my estimated count around 30 dancers and guests showed up for the annual fall fish fry on September 16 at the friendly confines of Jo and Ed Zganjar’s backyard. And despite the threat of rain we partied on and no rain fell. The mosquitoes were even hospitable to an extent. Among the crowd was old time Baton Rouge folk dancer Doss Burroughs who drove up from New Orleans and got reacquainted with old and new dance friends. Hopefully we can get Doss up to a Friday night dance sometime in the coming year. For the fry, the fish were mixed in with some great veggie dishes, salads, other delicious things and desserts. In short nothing was missing and a good time was had!
A new dance activity this fall was a series of Contra/Square Dance events featuring among others our own Charlene Heaton as caller. There was one on September 22, and another on October 20 at St. Alban’s Chapel on the LSU campus and a final one at the NuNu Arts and Culture Collective Building in Arnaudville. Music for the October dance was provided by our favorite Houston dance couple of Steve and Donna Bing who just keep coming back to their old Louisiana haunts to share their musical talents with us. And thank goodness for that. Rumor has it that there will be more cameo appearances by the Bings in 2013 and more contra dances called by Charlene so keep your time open for them. One other dance event of note was the Lafayette Black Pot Festival which also featured square, contra and Cajun dancing and great black pot food!
And topping off the folk performances for the year was a great performance by the Kabile Bulgarian Band at the ICC Hall of Culture on the LSU Campus on election night November 6. Thanks to Steve and Coco Collins for working out all the details of the event and arranging for the Kabile Band to perform and even hosting them overnight in their Mississippi Gulf Coast home.
Friday night dancing continued unabated this fall with good attendance and some new and old dances taught. Remember we can’t make a good go of it without the dancers so make plenty of your time available next year. We had a good Oktoberfest season on Friday night with the reteaches of old favorites, Spinradel, Das Fenster and St. Gilgen Figuren Tanz. Some Oktoberfest and Halloween costumes were seen at October’s party night to add to the fun. Also a hit was Jim Burke’s reteach of the Russian dance Timonia.
And in closing, we would like to acknowledge Mary Jordan Irving for typing out new BRIFD membership lists complete with home and email addresses and phone numbers. If you don’t have one, be sure and ask for one at Friday night dance. And also thanks to Bill LeBlanc for his continued support of the BRIFD website, www.brifd.homestead.com. We can all help Bill by sending photos and folk dance info to him at smobertoday@aol.com.
And finally, our year end schedule is as follows:
Friday night dancing will continue on November 16, November 30 (Party Night) and December 7 and December 14. There will be no dancing on November 23, December 21 and December 28. So have a happy Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holiday season everyone. Dancing will resume on the first Friday of the New Year, January 4, 2013.
