For the second festival in a row, the Dance Festival will have the most participants. This year, 16,879 dancers from 695 collectives will participate. This is less than the Centennial Festival, when 18,150 dancers from 739 dance groups took part, but more than other Dance Festivals.
The number of participants of the Song Festival collective choir will be the third largest after the restoration of Latvia’s independence – 15,870. The record was set in 1990 at the first Song Festival after the adoption of the declaration on the restoration of the independence of the Republic of Latvia, when there were more than 20,000 singers in the collective choir. In 2018, around 16,500 singers participated in the Song Festival.
However, this year the number of choirs participating in the Song Festival has increased. In 2018, there were 429 choirs, but this year there will be 454 choirs.
Also, 2,097 brass band musicians from 66 orchestras and 5,714 members of 580 brass band ensembles, vocal ensembles, folk music groups, amateur theaters and other independent groups will take part in the festival this year.
Foreign collectives will be particularly widely represented at the 2023 festival. In total, 88 diaspora collectives with 2587 participants will participate. In 2018, 84 diaspora collectives with 2411 participants participated.
Content continues after commercial
Advertising
“It was a huge surprise for us,” says LNKC Latvian stage dance expert Maruta Alpa, talking about the number of participants that has been reached at this festival, despite the restrictions of Covid-19 in previous years, which had a significant impact on self-organized collective rehearsals and concert opportunities.
Statistical data show that the worry about the number of participants in the Song and Dance Festival had a serious basis. In 2021, only 42,300 people were registered as members of artistic collectives in Latvia. This is the smallest number since 2003, since such numbers have been collected at all, according to the data of the Central Statistics Office. In addition, it is 45% or almost half less than in 2018, when the previous Song and Dance Festival was held.
It is for this reason that during the preparation process of this Song and Dance Festival, the idea even appeared that the festival should be postponed to next year, in order to give longer recovery time to self-employed collectives. “If it happened, it would be much more difficult. But now the festival has given an additional boost, and we see that the participants are eager to dance and their eyes are shining,” sums up Alpa, adding that this year’s festival comes just in time so that the folk dance movement can flourish again after the pandemic.
Also the chief conductor of the Song Festival, one of the choirs concert “Tīrums. Kaspars Adamsons, the artistic directors of “Dziesmas cejs”, says that during the pandemic there were concerns about the future existence of the choirs and whether the number of members in the choirs would decrease.
“It can be seen that new choirs have also been formed. Perhaps some collective did not survive the pandemic, but their number is definitely not measured in dozens. As far as the number of participants is concerned, it is probably a favorable coincidence that the pandemic is receding and the Song Festival is approaching, which has always attracted additional participants in almost all collectives. For example, I don’t remember other years when there was a choir in Riga with 100 members. Elsewhere, too, there are choirs with more than 80 or 70 singers,” says the conductor.
Report an error in the article
Highlight the incorrect text and press Ctrl+Enter.
Mark the wrong text and report it!
2023-06-29 04:31:37
#year #Song #Dance #Festival #largest #number #participants #history
