Dancing - At Last!

Several Saturdays ago(26 April to be exact), we were fortunate enough to be told about a great traditional dancing display to be held in the Place de la Comedie in Montpellier at 4.00pm on the Saturday afternoon. The display was free and was presented by three local dance groups - La Garriga Lengadociana de Montpellier; Lous Gueys Bignerouns de Langon and L'Esbart Maragall de Barcelone (Espagne). The Spanish group were included because there is a strong Spanish influence in this region because of its proximity to Spain (3.5hrs by car to Barcelona) and because for many centuries, Languedoc was in fact part of Spain and was owned by various Spanish Kings and princes. All the groups were excellent and put on a continuous 2 hour display of fantastic music, dance and costumes. One of the teachers from our French language school was in the La Garriga group.
The only disappointing thing was, that although I spoke to her about the dancing a few days before the display, at the display with her dance leader and again in class after the display to see if there were classes that I could attend while in Montpellier, she was very unhelpful. She gave me their web address and I had a good look at their site, but they don't advertise classes -you can only contact them by email and as I had already contacted them in person, this seemed to be going backwards. I got the feeling that they were very protective of their heritage and only wanted "locals" or at least "French" people to join. Tourists could watch displays, but not "join" them.
This was a shame, as you will see from the photos and Alan's video, that a lot of the stepping and formations were very similar to our Colonial / Celtic heritage. They did several line dances, some longways sets, some nice circle dances and a number of quadrilles. They even did Heel and Toe Polka with some nice variations to a circle progression. There were waltzes, polka, variations of Celtic stepping and other dancing and stepping that I did not know. There was also a fair amount of almost classical ballet in some of the choreography and stepping. Many of the dancers appeared to be professional or at least semi-professional dancers and in fact my teacher, whom I spoke to, had been doing classical ballet since she was 4 years old. There was a fantastic dance with scarves with a truly excellent finish that you will hopefully see in the photos.
The dancers were all very professional - smiling all the time, hands and feet kept up whenever required. As with all displays, a few mishaps occurred - a ladies shoe came off in one dance and a ladies cap came off in another dance, but both times, they kept going without an interruption and the men just kicked the offending article out of the way as they stepped across it - all very neatly done.
The costumes were excellent - very colourful and the groups all did at least one costume change each during the display to show off dances and costumes from different regions, styles or classes of people. There were some beautiful lace scarves in the Spanish contingent - a few photos included.
The music was also excellent - all live music and it really makes a difference. You will see the musos in some of the photos. When Alan gets time to edit his videos of the dancing and adds it to this blog, you will hopefully be able to hear it yourselves. Also for an outdoor venue, the amplification and sound quality was excellent.
For the dancing crowd - I hope you enjoy. I took about 300 photos during the display, so this is only a small sample. I am still trying to get to a dancing class, but we have been busy and transport home at night is still a bit of an issue, so I haven't made it a priority. I considered going to local salsa classes as that is very big here, but I would prefer the traditional dance. Hip Hop is also very big - it is a young population in Montpellier - and we were watching some hip-hop buskers in the Place de la Comedie the other night and they were excellent. It is a cross between ballet and gymnastics and the good exponents are phenomenal - spinning on their hands while doing hand stands, rotating on their shoulders, doing variations of the Russian Cossack squats (sorry - I can't think of the correct term), etc. In other words they are very fit and athletic and there is no way I could take up Hip Hop without killing myself, but it is good to watch.
Anyway here are the photos - comments welcome. Alan's video will come asap, but it takes a lot of editing, so we are putting the photos up now and will let you know when the video is added.
I am sorry some of the photos are not that clear - I had 2 problems; one was gaining access to a good clear vantage point and the other was a camera that was playing up - I had to use manual focus with lots of back glare and I found it very hard to tell whether I had the correct exposure quickly enough to take the action. At least that's my excuse for bad photos!!!!!!!