Bal Focus

 

Group dances with Mikuláš Bryan

As group dances generally don’t get the attention they deserve, we will give it to them. We will dive deep and focus on their core principles, so that even the simplest dances become surprisingly enjoyable and the most challenging ones approachable. How many (and how difficult) dances will we cover? Up to us. We will progress as fast as possible without giving up on quality. Until the dance really _works_, we are not moving on.
Expect mostly French dances, many of which you might know from festivals. You might be surprised how very different they feel when danced properly.
We recommend reading more about this concept and the teacher here, it will give you a very good idea of what to expect.

 

Couple dances with Emily Vandewalle, Tim Croes and – you

Ever went to a workshop, learned something cool, and three weeks later danced as if it never happened? Or perhaps it was gone at the evening party already, because there simply wasn’t enough time to understand the thing properly and/or to practice it enough to get it in your body. This event’s afternoons will go in the opposite direction. We will learn a little something new, and then have plenty of time to practice that (and/or anything else) with other motivated and experienced dancers. We will receive and give feedback; nerd together about why something doesn’t work the way it should and how to fix that; and practice – a lot. And because giving and receiving (useful!) feedback isn’t easy and a vast field of free practice time can be difficult to fill up efficiently, Tim and Emily (teachers at Heart To Feet in Leuven) will lead us through. They will provide us with a neat feedback framework, structure the practice time and facilitate our learning from each other. 

Each of the three afternoons will be dedicated to a different couple dance. We will start with scottish on Thursday; continue with polska on Friday; and finish with either mazurka or waltzes on Saturday (you will get a chance to express your preference in the application form).

 

This event is a good match for you if…

…you tend to be somewhat nerdy about dancing.
Is the urge to “get it right” familiar to you? Does it bug you when you don’t understand how something should be working? Are you curious to learn new things about dances that you perhaps already can dance (and it more or less works)? If yes, you will be in your element. If, on the other hand, you mostly enjoy learning dances intuitively and diving into technical details about them feel somewhat unnecessary or even constraining to you, you wouldn’t be happy here.

…you are an (occasional) teacher or organizer in your community.
Then we want you, and you want us. We hope that the knowledge we will gain during this event (especially concerning group dances) will then slowly spread through dance communities. We are looking forward to meeting with the people you’ll share this with at a random festival, in a circle or a chain, being excited about and grateful for how nicely things are working. Besides mastering the dances yourself, you will also have a great opportunity to experience (and note down 😉) didactical methods that you might later use yourself.
However, being a teacher or organizer is by no means a requirement. Being a bit of a dance nerd is more than enough. 

This event might be less your thing if…

…live music and/or parties until late night are crucial for you.
Then you’d probably be sad. We will perhaps have a bit of live music; and we will social dance for a while in the evenings. But we will be very much focused on learning. We will start reasonably early; and will organize the evenings in such a way that we are well rested for that.

…longer stretches of focused learning are tiring or in other ways unpleasant for you.
We will learn a lot, every day. Of course – anyone can get sick or unexpectedly need to take an afternoon off. But if you know in advance that three hours of learning are just enough for you for one day and you would just suffer through the rest (or had to skip it), it’s probably simply not worth it. The opportunity to work (quite a lot) is what you are paying for here.

…you are currently eager mostly about exploring your own expression and creativity.
We can’t wait to explore it with you on a dancefloor somewhere someday. But during this event, we are going to be quite technical. We value creativity and individual expression in dancing a lot; but also believe that diving into technique and focusing on learning and polishing something clearly defined in fact contributes to that (a lot). We will surely work on some tools and elements we will be able to creatively use afterwards, but it won’t be our objective here. Ask yourself whether this approach suits you the stage of your dance journey you are currently at.

…you need a lot of alone time and/or privacy to recharge. 
We won’t be able to ensure that. Most of daytime we will spend together, learning; and at night we will sleep in rooms for 5-10 people (to keep the price as low as possible). You can for sure opt out of collective meals or skip social dancing in the evening and go for a quiet walk instead – anything that will make you feel good. But in general, we are in this together, quite literally.  (If you’d like to find your own accommodation, please let us know, we can discuss that.)

 

Practicalities

When

August 13^th – 17^th. We start on Wednesday evening and end with Sunday lunch (in the morning, there will still be a lesson).

Where
Bal Focus will take place in Šumperk (formerly “Schönberg”; and indeed, there are mountains around and they are beautiful), a small city in the north-eastern part of the Czech Republic. It’s nicely calm, but still big enough to cover all usual needs (a few supermarkets, bakeries, cafés, restaurants, pharmacies…). If you need something rather specific and aren’t sure you would find it here, drop us a line, we’ll find out.
We will be staying in a boarding house called Penzion Stará Sokolovna, sharing rooms amongst 5-10 people. Each room has a bathroom and a kitchenette. Again – if you need to ask about specific facility, please do so (one of the rooms, for example, has a better equipped kitchenette – if you know you will be cooking, we might try to place you there). You can also check the website – it’s only in Czech, but there are some pictures that might help you get an idea.
The accommodation is not very close to the city centre (and the venue where we will dance) – about 3 km away. We’ll try to make the schedule so that public transport could help with some of the necessary transfers; others can be carried out by a taxi service that is quite cheap in Šumperk (especially when shared). A nice summer walk is also an option, of course.
If you’d like to come to the event, but want to find your own accommodation, it might be possible – let us know and we will discuss it with you.

How to get there

Surprisingly, that depends on where you are coming from. But as the probability that you will go via Prague is quite high, let us point out that from there it is cca 2h 30min by train (with one transfer in Zábřeh na Moravě). We will happily help you plan your journey within the Czech Republic if you want to; just reach out to us.

 

Price

We did our best to keep it low-cost (while not giving up on some basic level of comfort). The sum needed to cover the expenses would be 3300 CZK (132 EUR) per person. This covers:

• 12 hours of lessons on group dances by Mikuláš
• cca 3 hours of lessons on couple dances by Mikuláš
• cca 6 hours of practice+feedback sessions on couple dances, facilitated by Tim and Emily
• rent of the space we’ll dance in
• accommodation
• dinners at the boarding house (Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat)

We let you choose the size of your contribution on a scale from 2900 to 3700 CZK (116 to 148 EUR), based on your situation.

If we collect enough money, we’ll also arrange a live musician(s) for one of the evenings (most probably Mikuláš with some of his projects).

In case you registered and paid, but cannot attend the event after all, we’ll need to find someone who’ll take your place to give you your money back. Let us know as soon as possible – if we have someone on the waiting list, problem solved. If not, we will ask around, you will ask around, hopefully we find someone. This person would have to fill in the registration form, too, and wait for our confirmation.

Application

Would you like to join us? Please, fill in this form. (Caution: We will be inquiring a bit about your dancing background in the form, so it will take some time to go through.)