Saratoga Dance Flurry – By Seraphina Mallon-Breiman

This past weekend I left GMC’s campus to venture about an hour away into the city of Saratoga Springs, NY to attend a multi-cultural music and dance festival known as The Dance Flurry! The Dance Flurry is a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting and inspiring people through traditional music and dance. This festival’s goal is to help, inspire, educate, enable and protect our traditional dance and music legacy. They do this by incorporating multiple different forms of dance including contra, swing, latin, english country, square, vintage, clogging, hip-hop, cajun, zydeco, irish, scandinavian, middle eastern, asian, european, american and international folk, yoga and simple body movement.

One of my main passions in life is dance. I’ve danced since I was a little girl in some way shape or form and the company that I dance with at home, in Woodstock NY, is a world dance company called The Vanaver Caravan. 

The Vanaver Caravan was established in 1972 by musician/composer Bill Vanaver and dancer/choreographer Livia Drapkin Vanaver. Their love for the world’s diverse cultures and commitment to their art as well as to peace among nations, continue to inspire artists, students, teachers and audiences daily. I’ve been honored to dance with them since I was a young teenager and even now when I’m available. This past weekend we performed a series of dance pieces in tribute to the recently passed Pete Seeger, the incredible man who has performed with us throughout his life and is dearly missed. 

I had such a fabulous weekend dancing, performing and teaching and am always so amazed with how joyous I feel after interractions with dance, nothing else in the entire world lifts my spirits as quickly.

Photography by Lucy Schultz