Because of some train- and internet annoyances, it took rather more time than planned before I could blog about the Biennial EDC Conference in Bath. The conference took the stage in the magnificent 18th-century Prior Park Castle. Nowadays home to what I guess must be a typical Britisch boardingschool. We were lodged in the priory covert in a romantic English garden full of rocks, wells, ancient trees and grey squirrels. The view we had from the premisses over Prior Park Landscape garden with a glowering Bath in the valey below one should see to believe.

I was invited to present my Phd. research of the past few years in front of an audience of dance historians from all over Europe. I never received so many questions and suggestions as this time, which makes me feel realy happy for the future. Therefor I wish to thank each and everone of the staff, collegues and attendees of the conference for granting me such a nice experience.

Over the next few weeks I will blog regularly about my impressions abroad offering you all a rare glance through the eyes of a travelling dance historian in London & Bath.

Last Sunday, weather looked dreadful, so my wife and I decided to pay a visit to some good friends in Antwerp. The brand new Red Star Line Museum still topped our wishlist, so I booked some online tickets (required) and off we went.

The museum is built up as a journey through time, space and themes blended in a well flavored mix. To begin with, the building itself played a major role in European history of the migration to America during the 19th and 20th centuries. So the set designers deliberately focus on it in various ways highlighting different spaces and their functions. By the way, it is one of the rare museums in Belgium were one gets a decent plan offering an oversight of the whole expo before the start. Touches a weak spot of mine, but they nevertheless deserve praise for the effort

The nice thing for freaks like myself is that in this particular museum music and social dancing form one of the major thematic lines. Nicely interwoven in different parts of the exhibition (try and spot the ballroom in the giant scale model) it builds up toward a happy ending. One of the main myths about ocean steamers is the general idea that they were legendary places for dancing and music. Popular films didn’t necessarily do much good in that prospective. But let me put it plain once again: there wasn’t a ballroom on the Titanic worth the name and jazz was invented rather ashore than aboard. I perhaps wished the makers stressed these facts a tad more, but that is only my whim anyway.

About halfway there is a gorgeous part about the balls and other sorts of entertainment aboard, but then based on historical collections. And as a desert there is a fantastic section on cultural transfers. Immigrants of course carried their music along with them. Nice thing they show here all it’s fascinating brands and tastes. IMHO the unique role of African culture was for a much too long time solely highlighted by historians. But what would have become of the blues without Western scales and instruments like the piano and the guitar?

So naturally, race records with ethnic music styles from all over Europe are played and their origins explained. And because most of it used to be dance music, this boy was very lucky indeed. Particularly brilliant is the last piece of the expo: Irving Berlin’s very own personal piano. You know, the guy from hits like ‘There is no business like show business’ etc. He went aboard as Israel Isidore Berlin in Antwerp and henceforward in the States evolved into the worldwide famous music-hall composer and arranger. A true final chord.

This museum is a real treat, even for those with other fields of interest. The only low point is perhaps the rather underwhelming museum shop. A bit out of tune (pun intended) compared to the rest if you ask me.

Reflection: in wintertime, I tend to read more. I’m devouring one book after the other, taking them from the piles of inspiration I amass during the beautiful season. In doing so one sometimes encounters useful ideas for later plans. For a while now I’m fairly busy reading about ‘leisure’. A dutch translation for the very word exists (vrije tijd) but its meaning hardly covers the complex layers of meaning this simple noun gathered over time, honed and polished by the international academic community. On the one hand you would be able to find an equivalent for the purpose, on the other hand, it never would even come close to the same array of associations. Eventually, it would certainly add to massive misunderstandings and endless pub discussions.

My literary exploration started, quite naturaly, with Thorstein Veblen’s classic from 1905 – “Theory of the Leisure Class” the birth chamber of the invaluable meaning pair “conspicuous consumption” and “conspicuous leisure”. Again, I could porbably be able to try and translate these, but I deliberately wont. It just wouldn’t be proper. Now Veblen’s work is not in the slightest to be considered light reading and I must admit that I didn’t finish it in the end. I always try though to start with the original before jumping to the dedicated followers, fans or enemies. Particularly attractive about his discourse is, that he builds it up as a purely economic theoretical framework and along the way slips in bits and pieces of sociology, psychology and even anthropology. In doing so, his work definitely soar high above common economical theory, which is just fine.

The second book on my heap happened to be Peter Borsay’s ‘‘A History of Leisure. The Britisch Experience since 1500′. Just the idea suggested by the title seems a rather impossible mission at first sight: treating a unique subject over a period of a mere half millennium. Remarkably enough he succeeds. For my personal taste by throwing in a tad too much of sports- and seaside holiday studies – his personal work I guess – but nevertheless very worth reading and interesting thoughts. It seem to be Borsay’s ambition by using such an extensive time frame to avoid feeding once again the very popular “great divides” history discourse. Many historians just love presenting historical development as a series of successive conflicting eras by overstressing the differences between them. Sometimes it reminds one a bit of marking out a territory. The question one should always ask is then: would that really necessarily be so? There might appear more of a certain continuity after all by just looking around the corner of the next great divide. Refreshing and inspiring idea. I never met the fellow, but I think it could turn out being a nice encounter if one day by chance one day we would.

And what all this has to do with dance history? A great deal in my opinion. The way I see it, dancing is part of leisure. So naturally I try from time to time to look over the fence to look at what my neighbors are busy with.

To be continued…

Those who read this blog regularly will have noticed the rize in activity during 2013. To begin with, there was the launch of the new wordpress version in January. The old blogger platform didn’t offer any longer the possibilities I was looking for. Multilingual blogging for instance was something I was thinking about for a while. The main topic here being rather universal, allthough the content may be some of the time dedicated to more local subjects. Therefor I wanted to share the knowledge assembled here with a more international public. And last but not least, as an organisation, I wanted the platform to be capable of sending newsletters on a regular basis. All of which wasn’t immediately possible with blogger at the time.

Professionaly I worked with wordpress allready and I knew that I would be disposing of a reliable platform to achieve my goals. Of course it wasn’t always rosy along the way. WordPress is much more a target for hackers. I had to endure them a couple of times. In the end they forced me to take some unpleasant measures but for the moment the blog is spam free and it even seems I annoyed the hackers away.

But did all the work delivered in the end? When you look at it from a purely statistical point of view it actually did (thanks to Google Analytics):

	2012	2013
Unieke bezoekers:	1804	2057
Trouwe bezoekers	14%	20%
Tijd per bezoek	00:01:04	00:01:10
Aantal bezochte pagina’s	1,72	2,13

Of course one can discuss whether this is a significant growth or not, but for me it is sufficient. My topic is rather a niche in it self. And ask yourself: how many people would ever read something interest worthy on dance history anyway? And for the rest, I rather think my blog is far more popular than my purely scientific papers.

The number of posts went up from 26 to a whopping 37, 20 of which I translated in English. Not every post is interesting for non-dutch speaking readers. When I discussed my e-book I never translated the posts. It being a Dutch book, I didn’t see the necessity. By the way: it’s a book about the Belgian Folk Revival or rather the first part of three, discussing the singing – traditions and their origins. Or rather their construct, because I consider them to be invented traditions anyway. The book was downloaded 147 times from Smashwords, which I find a decent success for such an essay.

Which brings me to the point of my future plans. To begin with, I would like to clean up my old blog and transfer all the posts in a ‘pure’ way to the new platform. Imports often cause old mark-up problems to interfere with the actual content. I want all my post just to look the same as my last. And of course I will continue to translate some older material into English. The international dimension of my work still keeps me going and I receive some nice praize for it too. So…

And to finish this post, I would like to announce I’ll be going to the Biennal Early Dance Circle Conference in Bath (U.K.) to present a part of my scientific work to my pears. This means I’ll need to visit some Paris achives soon. All of which you will be able to follow on this blog. Have a nice read and stay tuned!

Source picture: http://alizeelifestyle.com