Arts Learning
ACHF Arts Education
At least 300 people will gain from this learning experience of Balkan Folk dances from five countries - in the workshop or the other events by five local and guest teacher and four visiting performing artists. About 50% of the participants will try this experience for the first time. Examples of evaluation methods may include, but are not limited to: surveys of the participants, the visitors; and interviews with the participating artists and representatives of the organizations. There will be participation observation and video recordings of the sessions in order to study them later.
We intended to include in different ways people from the Balkan communities, those who already are interested in the Balkan folklore and to attract some who were new to these cultures. We wanted to include all age groups and different levels of ability to dance the complicated Balkan dances. We also envisaged some who would not want or could not dance but would enjoy watching the others. We succeeded in attracting all these categories, but we would like to have more teenagers and more people from Roseville. The reason that we could not attract more participants from them was that we were spread too thin and could not afford people to visit the local schools, and even the announcement in the Roseville Lutheran Church newsletter was not published because of change of editor and loss of connection. We could have reached out to more dance communities in the neighboring states, as we discovered existed and were willing to travel, in the process of organizing and execution of the project. We still had a wide range of diverse participants. In the classes we saw teenagers dancing together with octogenarians. For the concerts and food came whole families, from the babies to the grandparents, and we had at least six languages spoken during the project. Thanks to the grant we kept our prices at a minimum, and advertised volunteering opportunities for those who would like to trade some of their time for free classes and concerts. The venues were handicap accessible. We have successfully attracted diverse participants and audience but we would like to include more categories and plan to work harder to attract them mainly in the schools and the local higher educational institutions. 200 audience members attended two concerts where 70 dancers and musicians performed on stage. Ten to 25 participants attended 10 classes, with approximately 75 individual participants. The participants’ perception of the Balkan cultures, mostly the folk dances, but also food, traditional costumes and music, was widened even for those from the Balkan communities.
Other, local or private