Spent a long weekend in France at the Damada festival, a balfolk festival with about 500 visitors. I had taken the opportunity to travel with a tour bus in which the Gonnagles and a lot of other folkies were traveling. We left Enschede at about 21:00 on Thursday evening and arrived after an exhausting (and way too crowded) trip at about 07:00 on Friday. We set up our tents, mine in a goal since the 'camping' was a sportsfield, and relaxed the whole Friday by making music, reading and in my case working on Jojo's present.

At Friday night the Gonnagles opened the ball and the dancing went on until the early hours of the morning. However, I went to bed around 00:30 because I was still very tired from the trip and wanted to participate in a workshop at 10:30 the next day. I slept like a log and woke up at 09:00. Took a shower (in the shared showers...), had some breakfast (brown bread and 'krentebollen' with cheese from home) and went to the festival site.

On Saturday I did the workshop Estonian dances, which was very relaxed and entertaining with nice circle dances. I even learned to count (phonetically) till 7 in Estonian. At 14:00 I participated in the workshop reverse rotation of the scottish, given by Koen, a Belgian. Unfortunately the workshops were all in French and even though Koen does speak Dutch and we had a lot of Dutch participants, he didn't give a brief explanation in Dutch. So it took quite some effort to follow the instructions and at one point I misunderstood them (he showed 2 variations and I guessed wrong on which was the right one), which resulted in Koen correcting me (he started in French until I reminded him) while I was trying to dance the male part. The whole workshop I danced the female part, but this time all males were taken already and a French woman approached me and 'made me the male'. Somehow I missed the whole reverse rotation thing, though we did learn some salsa steps.

I skipped the workshop of 16:00 because I was just too lazy and none of the workshops interested me enough. Had a nice ball evening again with the Gonnagles playing from 01:00 till 03:00 and went to bed shortly after.

Sunday I was woken up at 10:00 by a sms from Matthijs, who didn't come along after all because of the burial of his grandfather on Friday.. Did a quick breakfast and went to the festival site again to join in on the workshop irregular waltz. The waltz in 5 is quite easy, but the waltz in 8 eludes me. You can dance it in 3-3-2 or 3-2-3 and I have a lot of difficulty hearing the difference. But with a guy that can lead well it is not much of a problem.
At 14:00 I did the workshop 'variations of the jig' (jig is chapeloise in French) again by Koen. Again no resume in Dutch, but this one was easier to follow. Most of the variations I already knew, which made it all the more clear that some guys really can't lead... Skipped the 16:00 workshop again because I was lazy again. Did some reading and had a lot of fun with Eva, Tessa, Leon and Cecilia.

Sunday night I didn't dance much. I did follow the dance initiation of Indian Dances, but because of that I missed the start of the performance of Eric Theze and it was very crowded on the dance floor when I got there. The dances that I actually did, I did mostly with French or Belgian guys that I did not know. I had about 4 dances with so much fast spinning that if we had let go of each other I would have been launched to the other side of the hall. Went to bed at 03:30 after a shower because the alarm would go off at 06:00 to pack up my stuff and the tent and head for the buss that would leave at 07:30.

After a long trip (back in Enschede at 19:30) with not enough sleep I cuddled with Matthijs and cleared away my stuff and went to bed. It had been a good weekend.