The Inter Varsity Folk Dance Festival (IVFDF) is the longest running folk festival in the United Kingdom.
It differs from most other festivals in two respects: it moves location every year, and it is hosted and organised by student folk societies. However it attracts ex-students and folk music enthusiasts, who descend on the host university for a weekend of music, dance, song and sleep deprivation. The festival is always run in either the last weekend in February or the first weekend in March; one of the most recent festivals, at Exeter University in 2009, was attended by around 1169 different ticket holders — one of the most of any IVFDF ever (the previous record was just over 1000 attendees at the IVFDF in Manchester in 1986).
Read more about Inter Varsity Folk Dance Festival: History, Mascots
Famous quotes containing the words folk, dance and/or festival:
“In the past, the English tried to impose a system wherever they went. They destroyed the nations culture and one of the by- products of their systemisation was that they destroyed their own folk culture.”
—Martin Carthy (b. 1941)
“The city is all right. To live in one
Is to be civilized, stay up and read
Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise
By waiting up instead of getting up.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“Dont you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because shes tired of liftin that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin him on the sofa so he wont catch cold. Tonight were for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. Were goin to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (18941968)