Dancing for Barents

Second Russian-Norwegian dance festival supported by Norwegian Barents Secretariat was held in Barents region. It is hard to specify the place – master classes and shows were held in Tromsø, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.

The numbers are impressive – 3 cities, 6 days, 20 hours of teaching, more than 300 participants! But what are the numbers without personal experience? As compared with last year festival this time it offered more styles, and correspondingly more teachers and more participants. At the same time preferences split: Murmansk people preferred street styles, in Arkhangelsk Latin dances were most popular.

There were more than 100 people at Marsel’s salsa master-class! Norway – Tromsø salsa club – was represented by Oxana Barysheva and Marcel Pogorzelski, Anastasia Belyakova came from Narvik. Murmansk shared its break dance, dancehall and twerk (which was amazingly popular among girls).

And of course, there is no festival without competitions and brilliant shows. Openness and accessibility are main traits of the festival – no boundaries, everybody could come and dance. Instructors were very satisfied and all the more dancers. Many of them who tried a dance at master class start going to classes on regular basis. How do street dances combine with social ones?

"They are combined very well", says Andrey Melekhov, the festival organizer and dance studio director: on the one hand, these styles are different at least because social dances are mainly pair, while street dances are group or solo.

But they have much in common, they are based on improvisation both in music, and in movements. Social and street dances help a person to reach harmony with himself; this is about inner freedom and independence of others’ opinion. Dances bring people closer.

Also different dance experience, learning of new styles help dances of all levels to include something new in their style, it gives stimulus to self-development. Organizers are not going to stop at this, they already have some plans for the next year, for instance add master classes for the smallest.