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OFDA Café featuring Dale Hyde Photo: Allen Katz.
by Walter Zagorski

See many more photos on the OFDA website, at www.ofda.ca/photos.html.

The OFDA had its first café of fall on September 26th. People started
coming in at 6 p.m. and caught up with people they hadn’t seen in a
couple of months. After a potluck supper of various tasty dishes, Dale Hyde
did a mini-workshop. He was the recipient of the OTEA Scholarship for
2015 which he used to attend the Society for International Folk Dancing
summer school in Wales. The school runs for a week in the summer and
has teachers with an international mix of dances. This was the final seminar
run by the current organizers, who had expressed their intention to retire
a couple of years ago and asked for volunteers to take over, but no one
has stepped in.
Dale presented some of the dances he learned there. He started with
Nettenboaters Dans, a Dutch circle dance, that had arm movements
simulating the casting and hauling of nets from fishing boats. It was
followed by Triawdau Abertame, a trio dance from Wales. The attendees
started calling it the “helicopter” dance because at one point two of the
people in each trio pivoted around with raised arms over the lone person.
Next came Mari Kiz, a line dance done by the Gagauz, a Turkish minority in
Romania. It had an unusual rhythm. Dale next taught Tretur Fra Hordaland,
a trio mixer from Norway. It had reels where one of the women could
switch around from trio to trio. It was followed by Otkoga, a dance from
Pirin, Bulgaria, which was done to a song performed by a female choir.
Dale closed with Engelsk Mallebrok, a dance done as a circle of couples. It
became the nightly closing dance at the summer school, partly because of
the music. They had a hardingfele (a Norwegian fiddle) player who played
for the Scandinavian classes, and he also played this tune. It became the
hit of the summer school and it nicely closed Dale’s presentation.
The evening then progressed with a request program and people continued
to dance and socialize. It was a great start to the fall season.

Triawdau
Abertame, the
“helicopter”
dance.

Folk Dancer Online — 16 R e t u r n t o Table o f Con tents www.ofda.ca