Folkmoot performers rehearsing
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 by By Stina Sieg
In the last few days, the Folkmoot Friendship Center has morphed from an empty antique building into a bustling international hostel of sorts, housing dancers and musicians from all corners of the globe. In this, its 27th year, Folkmoot USA is playing host to more than 300 performers from Russia, Latvia, Poland, Jordan, Switzerland, Portugal, France, Ireland and Peru. From nearly the moment they arrived, the groups have been busy practicing for their shows, which will be held daily at venues across Western North Carolina until Folkmoot’s end on Aug. 1. Throughout the festival, the 300-plus performers will be eating, sleeping and socializing under the same
roof, with little privacy to spare.
And while this may not seem like everyone’s idea of a vacation, for many of Folkmoot’s performers, that’s exactly what this is.
“I feel so happy and good to be here,” said Niveen Sawooq, a dancer with Jordan’s Al Ramtha group, in the midst of her rehearsal.
Like so many at Folkmoot, the 23-year-old loves to dance but still has a day job back home. In Jordan’s capital, Amman, Sawooq is an English teacher. It’s only on trips like this that she’s able to completely immerse herself in her art for days on end. As she watched members from her group spin, stomp and clap around a gymnasium, she tried to explain why she has kept dancing all her adult life. She has been with Al Ramtha for nine years.
“When I dance, I feel like I can fly,” she said. “It’s something I feel inside. I can’t express it, but I feel it.”
In the past few years, she has traveled with her group to Iraq, Bosnia, Greece and Turkey, but she feels that this festival is different than most. Here, she and her troupe get to mix and mingle with performers from many different countries, a luxury they don’t always have. Humans are “social,” she said, and she feels this kind of cultural sharing is their natural state.
“It’s an experience for everyone,” she said. “It’s good for a person to see.”
Polish dancer Tomek Rutkonski, 27, knows just what she means. While the Jordan group practiced, he was just down the hall, resting at his dorm and chatting with his fellow dancers. Now on his second Folkmoot, the member of the Wisla troupe said that without this festival, there’s no way he would get to know such a varied bunch of people — or see them perform.
“It’s a really nice facility, because we can meet a lot of different cultures,” he said. “I really like it.”
Though he’s an investor and an insurance agent in Poland and calls his dancing a “hobby,” his passion for it is palpable. Back at home, he practices with Wisla twice a week and before arriving at Folkmoot, he and the group had spent 12 days at a festival in Indiana.
“I love to be on stage,” he said.
Needless to say, he can’t wait to perform. He loves his group, he said, and when they’re dancing in their traditional costumes, he hopes they impact the audience in a real way. The crowd, he hopes, will feel a little of what he and the other dancers do.
“I want to show them something, like, explosive,” he said. “I want to interest them when I’m dancing.”
It seems his words could have come from just about any of the performers at the Folkmoot center that day. Though they did so in their own ways, everyone who was asked about the festival described just how much it meant to be here. This is special, they all seemed to say.
As Latvian dancer, Baiba Sokolova, put it, “This is like our second life.”
At the other end of the center, she was taking a break from practicing with the rest of her group, Lielupe, for a performance that night. As her troupe mates twirled, jumped and air kissed in pairs, the 22-year-old performer explained this is a respite from her reality in Latvia. There, she makes a living as dance instructor, and though she likes it, teaching is far from her favorite aspect of the art. For Sokolova, a dancer since she was 3, the best part of dancing is enjoying the moment.
“Being on stage and the applause after every dance and the lights on you, it’s great,” she said.
Luckily for her and the rest of the festival performers, there is plenty more of all that to come. Folkmoot is just getting started.
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