A New Beginning

On October 16, GBIFD will be turning a new page. After running our weekly indoor sessions from September to June at the Owen Sound Family Y for 5 years, we are moving the sessions to the Parish Hall of St. George's Anglican Church. We will be dancing on Mondays from 10:45am to 12:30pm. The drop-in sessions are free for all adult and senior residents as well as visitors of Grey Bruce.

In the past few years, we have enjoyed the occasional drop-ins of some Y members on our Friday afternoon sessions. It was fun to have the young swimmers from the Owen Sound Aquatic Club join us weekly for half an hour last academic; that was part of their dry land training. Unfortunately, the group could no longer meet at that time because of some circumstantial changes of individual members, and the venue at the Y was not available at the new time that works for the group. After putting our heads together, and making a few inquiries, we were welcomed with open arms by the St. George's Anglican Church, one of whose foci in recent years has been community involvement

We hope that the change in venue, time and admission(now free!) means people who are interested but were unable to join us in the past can now do so. Something else new is that the sessions are going to be "open practices", which means that people in the community are welcome to come and watch.

One Down, Two to Go

Spring is usually a busy time of the year for our core group. We have performances at Grey Bruce One World Festival in May, at United Way of Bruce Grey's Seniors Fair in June, and a "Let's Dance" event at Owen Sound Canada Day Celebration on July 1st.

Feet on the ground, hands in the air

Well, only two more weeks and we will be dancing outdoors again at Harrison Park!

Chinese Fan Dance(Original Choreography)

We had our debut performance of the Chinese Fan Dance at Grey Bruce Chinese New Year Celebration 2015 on February 21 at Grey Roots Museum & Archives. Up till then, we have always done demonstrations and workshop. That was the first time we did a performance in costumes. Thank you Grey Bruce Chinese Culture Community for sponsoring the costumes

Smooth Transition Follow-up

Remember in June we organized an event at Hillcrest Elementary School for grade 6 students from Dufferin, Hillcrest, Keppel-Sarawak and Sydenham who would be attending grade 7 at Hillcrest this fall? Well, now that it is a month into the new school year, we are going to visit these students in their "new" school and classes and see how they are doing.

On October 6, we will be bringing these students together once again in their school gymnasium to do some dances they already know - Kambos(Greece), Alunelul(Romania), Kanaztanc(Hungary) and Kulsko Horo(Blugaria). I think we will probably have time to teach them a couple more - Ambee Dageets(Armenia) and Zemir Atik(Israel)

It's School Outreach Time Again!

Last school year, our School Outreach have visited over 20 classes of 3 elementary schools in Owen Sound --- Hillcrest, Sydenham and Dufferin --- and 1 in Southampton, GC Huston, introducing international folk dance to more than 500 children and youths. Two or three area schools are coming on board this year! The first workshops started today with a grade 6/7 and a grade 7/8 classes of Holland-Chatsworth Central School. Both classes learn 2 dances: Kambos(Greece) and Alunelul(Romania).

Learned a New Dance - Vreapceto(Bulgaria)