4 June 2012 - Chester Folk Festival (Day 3)

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Kettle Bridge band in full flow
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The first stand on the final day of the festival was at the Kelsall Social Club. There were a few spots of rain in the air when we arrived but not enough to cause any problems and nothing like the day before.

We congregated in the car park which was to serve as the performance area and which proved to be an excellent dancing surface. There was a reasonable sized crowd but I am not sure whether the biggest attraction was the dancing, the burger van or the stall selling all manner of tools at only £1 each!

Kettle Bridge started off proceedings with a performance of Ealuscerwen, which always goes down well as it features such interesting dance patterns and moves. Chester City Morris Men then did a garland dance, followed by Bradshaw's faithfully accurate story of the history of Gibraltar. You will be glad to know that the Brits beat the foreign chappies - let's hope this is an omen for the forthcoming Olympics.
I am cheating really because I am actually writing this after the Olympics and we all know how well Team GB did.

Then it was Team KBC's turn to dance and the squire's choice was Colne. Alternating with Chester City, we performed Aughton and KBC Processional and this brought proceedings to a close.

The final stand was back down the hill at the Lord Binning pub but, en route, Kettle Bridge were invited to stop off at the Sable Cottage residential home to perform for the residents. The dancing area was a little smaller than normal and this resulted in a few crashes and accidental stampings but the dancers generally coped very well, performing KBC Processional and Cossington. The residents (and staff!) thoroughly enjoyed the show.

And so it was off to the pub for the final part of the entertainment - but first there was some dancing to do! Chester City Morris had arranged to run a workshop to teach a dance called Shawforth. This is presumably named after the Lancashire village situated between Rochdale and Burnley. I would love to think that the dance originated in the nearby village of Ramsbottom but no-one was prepared to show off their Ramsbottom in public.

Enough of my rambling (which of course is what sheep wear when they dress up, but ewe knew that. I can't pull the wool over your eyes).
We stayed in the car park to perform our final set of dances. Bradshaw reprised their Gibraltar performance and Chester City appropriately danced Shawforth. Kettle Bridge's last dances of the day were Milnrow and St. Helens.
And that was that!

Special thanks must go to the organisers of the festival and to everyone we met at the event. Thanks in particular to Chester City Morris for hosting our stands. And finally, a big thank you to the Kettle Bridge band for performing so well and keeping the dancers in time. It was a fantastic three days full of good dancing, fun and camaraderie.

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Kettle Bridge Clogs web site by Stephen Cordery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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