Springville World FolkFest

Ok, so this is a Monarch butterfly, not the FolkFest.  However, it was the first butterfly I've seen in ages.  And it was a Monarch, which I never see, apart from in butterfly houses.

Some days we have the most amazing clouds.

The FolkFest is a huge deal- 90 teams applied to come from all over the world.  Walking past, though, you would just think it was a local event in the local city park.  The combination means you get the best of both: family picnic blanket seating with world-class dancing.  Each dance team brings their own band so you also get live music that sounds incredible.

The stage was built specifically for this event, which has been going on, I'm pretty sure, since 2007.  This is the opening ceremony.  The BYU dancers do a dance that combines dance styles from different parts of the world and then all the dancers run on stage with their flags.

These are the cloggers from Utah, representing the US.  They acted out a picnic scene as an intro to their dance.

These are the girls from Taiwan.  Those parasol-like things they are holding above their heads are actually octagonal handkerchiefs that they somehow can keep spinning.  

These fans had silky fabric attached.  Think of the river scene of Uncle Tom's cabin in "The King and I."  Now add waterfalls and rain and clouds in addition to that river and make it fire colored.  That's what their dance looked like.  

These women are doing the Fancy Shawl dance.  Their costumes are incredibly detailed.

These are the dancers from Chile.  I think they were the main dancers of the night because they did the most dances.

These are the dancers from the Netherlands.  They acted out a story.  First, the lords and ladies of the mansion leave so the servants sneak into the dressing room and put on all their clothes; which were like aprons (see above).  Then they pretend to do the dances (17th-18th century dancing).  Then they take off the fancy clothes and do their own dances, which everyone liked much better because it was almost like square dancing.  Every piece of costume is hand sewn!

On the grand finale, the BYU students did an dance from India.  Then all the dancers came out for a big bow.  This was actually taken after the show when we could go up to the stage.  If you look on the far left to the people in orange costumes, those are the dancers from Martinique that came to BYU and taught us one of their folk dances.  Mary and I's partners actually remembered us when we were walking around getting pictures.  They still can't speak English and we still can't speak French.

We even caught our dance teacher on the stage afterwards.

Ruby was determined to get a picture with all the dancers, jumping up on the stage to make sure we didn't miss one.  (She's been dancing since she was 4 and is very serious about it.)  It was amazing since Mary and I never would have done it.  I really liked these dresses.  

Here we are with some of the Native Americans.  It was funny because all the other dancers don't speak English, not the ones from Chile, not the ones from the Netherlands.  But the Native Americans do.  They are the same as us.  We went up to the girl to ask if she would take a picture with us and she gave us a look like "Why would you do that?"   And then she realized she was in costume.   Everyone there was really friendly.  It was a great night.