The 4th North Cornwall Dance Festival is taking place this week via a live stream, having started on Wednesday 17th and continuing to Saturday, 20th February. Over 150 performances in ten styles from ballet to street, contemporary to tap, have been entered by video, with the youngest performer being just four years old and the oldest 34 years old. Competitors come from all over Cornwall and Devon, and entries have also been received from Malvern, Surrey and Cirencester. This year’s adjudicator is Jacquie Storey, a Fellow of the British and International Federation of Festivals for Music, Dance and Speech (BIFF) and Chair of Sussex Festival of Performing Arts. Last year’s North Cornwall Dance Festival, held in February half-term at St Joseph’s School in Launceston, was one of the last dance festivals in the country to be held before the first national lockdown. This year, entrants have had to be enormously inventive in adapting their choreography and performances to very different conditions. Performances have been recorded in a variety of locations from front rooms to a tap performance on plyboard in an empty carpark at sunset! Jessica Harrison-Chu, founder and director of the Festival, said: “Everyone involved in the Festival was determined that this should go ahead this year in some form. I am incredibly grateful to all the performers, choreographers and teachers who have managed to produce video performances in incredibly difficult circumstances. Their imagination and creativity have been amazing. Anyone who logs onto our live Facebook feed of the Festival will be see the talent and spirit everyone who has taken part has shown.”
Jacquie Storey added: “I was disappointed that the current lockdown restrictions meant that I wouldn’t be able to adjudicate in person this year, and so pleased when I was told that the Festival would go ahead online. I am enormously looking forward to adjudicating these performances and humbled by the work and determination everyone has shown in keeping the North Cornwall Dance Festival alive this year. I know that everyone involved is longing to rehearse and perform live, just as soon as this is possible.”
For details of how to register for the live stream of the North Cornwall Dance Festival, go to: www.facebook.com/northcornwallfestival or www.northcornwallfestival.co.uk