strathspey@strathspey.org:52502

Fiona Grant

The Welsh Smallholder and Garden Festival and Builth Wells Dance Festival (was The Bonnie Hoose of Airlie)

May 21, 2008, 11:13 p.m. (Message 52502)

Thanks to Wendy Loberg for sending me details of the Bonnie Hoose of Airlie,
and to Fran and Phill for news of John who was of Montrose but who is now of
Port Talbot, South Wales.

Hi Bruce,
In answer to your question, we danced both these dances at the Celtic Dance
Festival held in mid-Wales alongside the judging of sheep breeds, unusual
pigs, and the selling of ducklings and chickens of all types of feather
arrangement. All were congregated together amongst the plants, local produce
and crafts at the Welsh Smallholder and Gardens Festival held near Builth
Wells: http://www.rwas.co.uk/en/garden-festival/  The Builth Wells Dance
Festival: http://www.builthwellsdancefestival.org/ decided to move in with
the smallholders to increase publicity for the dance events, and because
other halls in the town became unavailable: and it was indeed a Memorable
Occasion. 

The Thornhill dancers (http://www.thornhillscd.co.uk/index2.html ) from
Dumfriesshire, (most in their twenties or younger!) danced energetically and
magnificently, and their leader, Sinclair Barbour, led an impressive
workshop where he taught The Bonnie Hoose of Airlie, the Thornhill
Strathspey and The Royal Salute in less than 90 minutes. They brought their
own band with them, members of which are students studying traditional music
at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama(RSAMD) in Glasgow, and who
played for an exhilarating evening's dancing. The dance John of Montrose was
included on the programme, and it didn't occur to me at the time that it
might be a local dance. In the afternoon, all the dance groups had paraded
round the site among the stalls selling Welsh lamb pasties, cider, bedding
plants, past the donkeys and the birds of prey and on into the arena, then
back to the hall for displays of clogging, Morris dancing, Appalachian,
Turkish, Playford, and Scottish country and highland dance. 

Some of us also had fun trying out the beginners' workshops in Appalachian
clog dance and Turkish......

Just recovering now,
Fiona
Bristol