4 little kids doing a perfect gavotte in a sea of 500 dancers
Published about 2 months ago • 7 min read • Community and culture, Movement and dance
Le Grand Bal de l'Europe
What's the farthest you've been willing to go to try something new? Like, I'm pretty adventurous; I once took an entire summer driving around the USA in a pickup truck with a topper on it.
... but compared to William Watson?
This guy loaded up his bicycle and flew halfway across the world, to a country where he doesn't speak the language, to stay in a stranger's backyard for two weeks for an absolutely one of a kind dance event where he didn't know anybody.
This interview is a little exclusive too, because William is one of only about 10 Americans who attend the Grand Ball of Europe.
I heard about Le Grand Bal from a musician friend of mine.
Le Grand Bal de Europe, the big dance of Europe, takes place in central France, usually about the end of middle to end of July/beginning of August.
This is a huge festival that's been running for 35 or 40 years. These days there about 3,500 participants. About 350 are musicians on staff, in over a hundred bands.
It takes place on an old family farm, about 10 kilometers outside a town of 20,000, smack dab in the center of France, in the northern end of the Burgundy region of France. Big crews come in and set up huge dance tents. The largest are about basketball court size, about 50 by 80 foot tents. And there There are some smaller ones, "only" about 30 by 50 feet.
There are three 2-hour our workshops on every dance floor, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. And then evening, they used to have a dance performance. Now they'd start bands on six of the dance floors, and change bands twice. The third set of bands is scheduled to play until 3:00 AM; at that point they shut down the sound systems because the sound crew has to be coherent for the workshops at 10:00 AM! And, you know, they only have so many sound techs. But any musicians who want to play acoustically are welcome to keep going. Usually there'd be a dance floor or two going until dawn... 15 days straight.
So it's a huge event. Most people are camping out, so as you're wandering back to your tent or camper, there'll be people playing music, fixing food, chatting, wandering around... you're completely, totally immersed in European folk music and dance.
A man and his bicycle
I never had much experience with folk dance until a coworker suggested, "Hey, you might check out this local folk festival I go to. You might enjoy it." I had fun with that, so she said, "well, that worked out well. You might try this weekly folk dancing thing." And then once I fell into it, it was like - that's it. My life is different.
The company I worked for at that time, every four years, got a sabbatical leave. You had six weeks off at full pay. So I thought, ok, let me do something different. So I packed up my bicycle, flew to Paris, had three or four days in Paris sightseeing. Then I took the train South to Milan, the town near the festival, bicycled out to the festival and had nine days at the festival.
I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any idea that I would ever encounter anyone I knew. I do not speak French. I had bought a little "teach yourself French" lessons with cassettes. I could sort of cope, I mean I'm better now. I still can't have a conversation, but I can understand a little bit more of the instructions.
I guess maybe the most surprising thing was how easy it all was. I've been to this festival seven times now.
Who goes thar?
Last summer I think there were 10 Americans. I was trying to meet them, anytime I heard what sounded like an American accent in English, I introduced myself.
It's a very broad age distribution, and they're folks from all over the place. There were some little kids. There was one evening this last summer where during a gavotte lavonne, there were four little kids who might have been 10, doing a perfect gavotte, just the four of them in a sea of 500 dancers. So you've got little kids, you've got some teens, 20 somethings all the the way through 60 somethings, probably 80 something year olds.
The Map! Each dot represents where someone is from. Not official, but fun! Notice "Tattooine..."
Butterfly collecting
The four main couples dances in central France are waltz, bouree, schottische, and mazurka. And if you've got those dances down, then you can have a great time.
This last summer there were workshops on six dance floors, three two hour workshops every day, then a scattering of half hour sampler workshops, for, "Hey, I wanna try this, but I don't wanna commit to two hours." So if you say there were 20 workshops a day for 15 days, that's 300 workshops.
Some of the workshops are something new you didn't know, or "here's a new dance to you and we're introducing it." Or, "Here's the finesses and subtleties of a dance you might not have picked up on." Or on very specific choreographed dances I call butterfly collecting; here's a shiny, very specific thing. Or, "here's good ways to teach this dance," or some easy dances for beginners that you can learn and take home to your dance communities.
There was a workshop which was equivalent of "German swing dance variations for French schottische" taught by a couple. He was German and she was French, and I happened to have ended up with a partner who was Italian. I could sort of follow the German, she could sort of follow the French and we could compare notes in English! We decide we wouldn't rotate partners, we'd stick with each other as that seemed to be working.
Want to go?
It's not as though it's the far side of the moon! It's not as though you're going to Burning Man where everything has to be brought in and taken out.
You fly into Paris or you fly into Lyon. They have an excellent train system. You just book your ticket and get on the train, then go to the town. If you happen to have a bicycle, that's very easy to get to the festival. 10 kilometers. Six miles. It's half an hour, 45 minute bike ride and you're there.
Or if you don't have that, you are at the train station, and if you're arriving at the beginning of the festival, gee, there are a whole bunch of other people with instrument cases and backpacks and tents and things. Huh! And so you, share a cab and you take a taxi out to the festival, and bang, there you are.
Go through the registration and check in, and they'll put a little wristband on and you're golden.
The festival itself is remarkably inexpensive. The registering for this entire 15 day event this last summer I think less than $250. The airline ticket is a little something coming from the US, but the festival itself is dirt cheap. That includes the use of the camping areas, but doesn't include meals.
If you buy all the meals prepared, which you can do, you can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I think a meal ticket was 11 Euros. So you don't have to bring any equipment to produce your own food.
Get yourself there with clothes and enough of money or a credit card to buy the meal tickets and that's it. You're set, more dancing and more music than you can possibly imagine.
Find the music you can't sit still to
The basics of these French dances are are fairly straightforward, accessible. You can learn and start dancing easily. Then there's always more you can learn and more ways to do it and more possible connections and subtleties and so forth.
The bands are amazing. Dancing to people who've clearly been playing this music for years, there is nothing like it. It is just so amazing. These are people who are taking their local traditions or the traditions from nearby and making them their own. They're bands who have new arrangements or new melodies, new tunes, new ways of of playing it, and are sharing that and keeping the traditions alive as living, evolving folk traditions.
If I could play music, if I could speak French, it would be a very, very different festival for me. But it's amazing as it is, even without, either of those.
There are thousands of people. That, and the dozens and dozens of bands, and this is clearly a living tradition. This is not just for a few "weirdos" who happen to have a strange hobby.
I'll absolutely do what I can to encourage people to dance. Whether it's French dancing and this the Grand Festival, or Cajun or Country two step, there's a whole wild world dancing out there. There are so many different varieties.
Find the music that you can't sit still to, find some community that is doing some dancing. Learn the dance or discover at least if that's a community that works for you. There's a whole world of dancing out there. It allows you to connect to people, engage with people, and engage with music. There are many, many, many choices available.
Resources from William
A huge thank you to William! He has a comprehensive website for those interested in either folk dance (Bal Folk) or the event.
