February 25, 2010

Well I have finally updated all of the links to my You Tube account at royisdancing.
The my video of Sarba batuta has passed the over 200,000 views mark. Who would of thought that it would be come a hit in Romania?
The video is from the evening party after I taught it at Gypsy Camp North, our fall workshop in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The name Gypsy Camp has caused some problems with both the Roma and Romanian Communities; so much so that we changed the name to Dance in the Woods.

We will be doing Dance in the Woods again this year September 10 to the 12. This event is usually one of my best sources of videos because we teach dances that we have learned during the summer at dance camps during the Dance in the Woods weekend.

I am sorry that I haven't finished converting all the links in the video list to my YouTube account at Royisdancing. I will continue to work on that. I have added some new pages to the IFDVL.ORG web site:

• Jan Tuller Memorial Cabaret, February 14, 2009
• International Dinner at the First Congregational Church, March 7, 2009

Take a look they have some fun videos of my group Lincoln Village Dancers performing.

I am currently working on uploading the videos from Sacramento Internation Folk Dance and Arts Council's Camellia Festival 2009.

When I am done I will add a new teacher to the list Dr. Jerry Duke. Jerry is a fun teacher and a master of American Traditional Dance.

Dance to live and live to dance.

See you on the dance floor Roy.

I have migrated the majority of my videos to www.youtube.com/user/royisdancing . One of the videos Sarba batuta has become a hit in Romania. I have recently uploaded a number of videos to the site and added a few new events to the past event list.

Changes to the Video List

There will be some major changes coming to IFDVL.ORG web site. Brightcove which I have been using as my major video host has just announced that they will no longer provide free video hosting. This means that I will have to migrate all of my video to a free hosting site most likely You Tube.

Look for the new look soon as Brightcove will shut off the free service by December 17.

Roy

The Video for International Folk Dance

This is the first commercial for International Folk Dancing. It has gone through some changes. Loui Tucker and I have been collaborating on it. This is version 9. Watch it and please give me some input. The only real change is the web site listed at the end. This is the new web site for the Ithernational Folk Dance Video List, ifdvl.org.

Sacramento Internation Folk Dance and Arts Council

The Sacramento International Folk Dance and Arts Council (SIFDAC) puts on five major events during the year. For SIFDAC the new year starts in August.

• Membership Barbecue usually the second or third week of August.
• SIFDAC at The California State Fair last weekend in August
• Gypsy Camp North at Camp Sacramento last weekend in September.
• Scholarship Ball last weekend in January.
• Camellia Festival, SIFDAC's main event the second weekend in March.

These events have been the main source of videos on the SIFDAC channel. Another source of videos has been the SIFDAC Outreach Program. This is a category I created on the web site for when SIFDAC members do events for the general public.

Roy

Why I Dance

Why do I Folk Dance.

The photo at the top of the page says it all. I dance for the pure joy of it. When I first began it might of been for the satisfaction of getting that complicated step pattern right or looking good on the dance floor. Now I dance for the joy. That is why I now find the simple social ethnic dances ( Pravo, Cocek, Sryto, U'sest) to be more fun than the overly choreographed stage dances that some of the hotshot dancers like. I prefer live music to an amateur band to recorded music.

Sometimes it everything comes together and it is just wonderful.

Luckily, this happens for me almost every week in my Monday dance class the Roy Butler Dance School. The ladies, I teach in this class, also dance for the joy of it. A trait they learned from Jan their original teacher, from whom I took over the class when she had to move.

Even though I said I like the simple dances, the screen capture at the top of the page comes from a performance of Rustemul at a Miorita Romanian party.

The last time I went to a general folk dance party and we entered the moment was when the Village Folk Orkestra played in Garden Valley.

Here is hoping you find the joy of folk dancing.

Roy