First off are a couple of photos of Alan & Denise planning our daily activities over breakfast on our small Lomener flat balcony overlooking the sea - very pleasant! After that a couple of the festival site tents, literally alongside the canal and yacht harbour; then some street scenes showing performers in costume and lastly a sample of the strong Celtic & Breton political presence at the festival - the local street signs in French & Breton, a couple of t-shirts for sale, one of many local Celtic writers doing a book signing and just some people attending the festival.
This says: "We need you. Join the Breton Reunited Association"
This says: "Why learn American (English), Tomorrow the whole world will speak Breton" (The French distinguish between American English and English English because they find it difficult to understand the American accent - true!!!)
As well as the official concerts in comfortable venues (see further below), there were lots of street performances if you wandered around the festival site and town in general. Here are a sample of impromptu photos taken as I wandered the festival. If you scroll down far enough you will spot yours truly (in a striped jumper) trying a spot of Breton dancing in the street. It was lovely hearing whistles, harps, violins, etc as you wandered the streets. There is also evidence of the only Australian performers this year - the Qld pipe band.
The day time concerts were excellent. I wont comment more as I said lots in my emails at the time. Here is a selection of photos, in order, of the Irish dancers, the excellent Welsh group called Crasdant, Galicia Spanish dance group, Asturia Spanish band, Isle of Mann dancers, Baghad duo competitions, Therese Kearney from Ireland.
The nightly concert spectacular truly was a spectacle. We have seen nothing on this scale at any Australian "folk festival". It involved several groups from every country represented at the festival and several of the groups changed each night. It was a true sound and light show. It went for nearly 3 hours, starting at 10.00pm and finishing just before 1.00am! Although it may seem rather large and grand for a folk festival it provided lots of atmosphere, a good showing of the different groups and a true spectacle. You could always see the groups in smaller venues during the daily concerts as well. The spectacular was held in the local football stadium and the stage comprised one large square diamond shaped central stage on the oval plus two smaller similar stages on each side. The backdrop was a huge white sheet / screen, on which they projected various moving and still images. The performers entered the stage from under this screen. For each band / dance group they announced their name and provided various symbols and history related to their country. The images were beautiful and the screen was huge. Often they imposed close ups of solo artists or small groups onto the larger images. I have tried to provide a cross section of the actual dancing and performances along with the backdrop. Although we had excellent seats in the stadium, it was still a fair way from the stage and at night using hand held camera, I could only do so much with the zoom (I do not have a tripod), so please take this into account when viewing the photos. The concert finished with a spectacular fireworks display. To digress slightly - the French love Fireworks and use them frequently and extravagantly throughout summer for all celebrations and outdoor shows!
The night concert at the Fishing Port was also huge. It was amazing to be allowed in to an active port with boats still up on dry dock and others being fitted out. All they had was fencing wire around them to keep people out, but everyone was well behaved. You can see even in these photos how big the crowd was, but it was still good. I am sure Australian occ health & safety rules would not have allowed such a venue, but it worked well and certainly provided an atmosphere.
Food at the festival was varied and the demonstrations of "celtic" esp. Breton food were ample and very interesting. Here is a photo of the tented dining area in the festival site, daily cooking demo of Breton cakes, a food stall of the local foods, traditional fish smoking process.
That concludes the Lorient photo blog. If you would like to see more of anything, just ask as I took lots of photos as per usual! Denise also has photos.
No comments:
Post a Comment