You ask in the blog "how did
you discover this". My journey started with Tufty of this parish, who would do bourrées in Whitby's Elsinor in about '85. It was my wife, Vanessa who took to them most, bought Rosbif (Brighton group) LPs, and took me off to Blowsabella dances, where I was astonished to meet old Folk camp buddy Dave Roberts. we both had long association with international dance (initially via Folk Camps), we used to stay with the van Doorn family in Amsterdam. But they were into Balkan, Israeli, Swedish … think I only ever did one French dance there.
Whitby had a periodic financial crisis in 1988 and cancelled all the things we most valued (creche, a lot of the street stuff) in 1989. WRT the recent "parsimony" thread … 1990 was the first year we
didn't buy 2 season tickets (plus programmes
) But the damage was done, we'd heard of St Chartier and set off there in 1991 as "main family holiday". It was a long pedal, kids were 7,5,1
This was right at the end of that festival's golden years. Again many styles in play (a true "melting pot"). It was Chris Wood approx '95 who tipped us off about Fête Embraud, "gorgeous", "little","family" and the lovely welcome we got from Maxou Heintzen at the gate, and sheer quality of their music had us hooked immediately. Had bought Paris's «Carnet de bal» tape previous year
topped up with his new «Rue de l’ Oiseau»
played 'em full blast driving through the endless Berry sunflower fields, magic music, played 'em literally to death, eventually the iron oxide rubbed off!
