BATON ROUGE INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCERS

NEWSLETTER

FALL/WINTER 2015

Well Baton Rouge International Folk Dancers we have reached the end of the fateful year of 2015 so here is some year end news and information to plan your Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and for ringing in the New Year and celebrating the old.

2015 was another lively folk dance year.  Thanks to Mary Irving who keeps us up on the Irish music and folk dance scene.  The Baton Rouge calendar of Irish events included an Irish Music night at Café American back in February that some BRIFD dancers attended.  Then the annual and now 57th San Antonio Folk Dance Festival went on this year from March 13-15.  We had a good Baton Rouge group in attendance among which were Rey Del Castillio, Bill Leblanc, Dugan Sabins, Idabelle and Jim Burke, Joan Parness and friend Doug, Charlene Heaton, Kim Baker, Janetta Kriel, Camilla Pugh and Vonnie Brown.  It was special to have Vonnie with us this year. It was just like the good old days!  The teachers this year included our old time favorites Lee Otterholt teaching international and Mihai David teaching Romanian.  We have been going as a  group to the SAFD Festival for over 25 years and it has always been a special time being with all the great teachers and folk dance friends but also with SAFD Festival founder Nelda Drury.

Also this year was a special time for Louisiana Contra and Square Dancing.  There have been monthly dances in both Lafayette and Baton Rouge.  The Baton Rouge dances held on the LSU campus at St. Alban’s Chapel have been led by our own Charlene Heaton who has recruited a variety of  callers besides herself and great live bands.  The dances are really a lot of fun and the live music has made them all the more special.  Several folk dancers have attended over the year including Jim and Idabelle Burke, Joy Ferrara, Janetta Kriel, Ben Strong, Connie Holmes, David Kirshner, Karl Volkmar and Dugan Sabins. The November Baton Rouge dance was a “double dance” event featuring and English Country Dance program along with Contra dancing.  The last Contra Dance of the year is set for December 5th in Baton Rouge. One other notable dancing event this year was a Bulgarian Dance Workshop held in New Orleans and sponsored by our folk dance friends in the Crescent City International Dancers. The featured teacher was Nikolay Tsvetkov who was making tour of the US and certainly presented some lively new Bulgarian dances to add to our already popular Bulgarian dance line up.  Attending the workshop were Charlene Heaton, Janetta Kriel, Dugan Sabins and our resident Bulgarian Krassimira Antonova who has helped us reteach some of the dances learned at the workshop at our Friday night dances.

And to end the 2015 Baton Rouge Folk Dance year, BRIFD hosted a special event at the October 16Friday night dance.  We celebrated Jim Burke’s 80th birthday with a party as organized by his family and it was a rousing good time for all.  It can be said that we also celebrated wife Idabelle’s 80th also since she just celebrated her’s earlier in the year. Approximately 50 people attended and we have a picture to prove it!  It was one of the largest if not the largest gathering ever on our beautiful old wooden dance floor.  It was a night not soon to be forgotten! We also made special notice at this event and the Oktoberfest Party night that our own Janetta Kriel has also reached the special 80th year in her life!

And so as we end the year, here as a schedule for your calendar:

This Friday is the last dance Friday of November and will be a regular dance night.

Next Friday, the 27th,  is the day after Thanksgiving and we will NOT dance.

We will be back dancing on the first two Friday’s in December, the 4th and 11th , but as of this date probably NOT on Friday, December 18.  We will discuss that tonight.  Also there may be a Christmas Party but a date has yet to be set.  This also to be discussed tonight.

The first Friday Night dance of the New Year will be on January 8th, 2016.

So have a thankful Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all you folk dancers out there and be sure and make those New Year’s resolutions to include folk dancing at every possible chance!!

**** Some follow-up for the BRIFD Year End Newsletter: ****

I meant to add one more important folk dancing event for the 2015 summary:

We have had for many years Israeli Folk Dancing in Baton Rouge coordinated by our own David Kirshner.  It is sponsored and held at the Congregation B'Nai ’Israel Synagogue.  Several BRIFD members attend including Charlene Heaton who is frequently a teacher.  The dances are held on a special schedule on Sunday nights at the Synagogue and notices of the dances are sent to the BRIFD email list.

I also wanted to remind everyone of our website; http://brifd.homestead.com/.  It is managed by Bill Leblanc and he does a good job of keeping up with BRIFD activities including some always interesting photos of our activities.

Also, we have now developed an ad for notifying the community of BRIFD.  It has been placed in the Friday Magazine called, RED, in the Baton Rouge Advocate.  Check it out.

And so this is all folks!









This page was last updated: August 29, 2023
This page was last updated: August 29, 2023