"Boyan" Ukrainian choir with the "Ukrainian Folk Ballet". Photo taken during the Shell National Folkloric Festival in 1974, Sydney.
Shell National Folkloric Festival was an annual ethnicfolkfestival held in Australia. Sponsored by the Shell-Sydney Opera House Foundation[1] with a grant of $50,000, the first Festival was held at the Concert Hall during the opening celebrations of the Sydney Opera House in 1973.[2] The festivals were held in Sydney but were later also held in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin and Brisbane.[3]
In 1975 one thousand performers, representing 30 ethnic groups living in Australia, performed folk music, song and dance at the Opera House,[2] and by 1982 this had grown to 1400 performers representing 48 different ethnic groups.[4][5]
From 1979 to 1994, Guillermo Keys-Arenas was the major artistic producer-director of the annual event.[1][3]
Performing Groups
Between 1973 and 1994 performers representing ethnic groups from Australia, Austria, Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, and Ukraine, performed at the Festival.[7]
Groups which performed at the Festival included:
Ensemble Gavrilo Princip - Serbian National Defence Council with choreographer Milivoje Stojanovic
Boyan Ukrainian Choir, with Basil Matyash as conductor
Daina Sydney Lithuanian Choir, with Zita Belkutė and Bronius Kiveris as conductors
Dorothy Kerr's Highland Dancers
Grandinele Lithuanian National Dancing Group, with Ginta Viliunas as a featured dancer
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Music of Lithuania refers to all forms of music associated with Lithuania, which has a long history of the folk, popular and classical musical development. Music was an important part of polytheistic, pre-Christian Lithuania – rituals were accompanied by music instruments and singing, deeds of the heroes and those who didn't return from the war were celebrated in songs.
Sydney Dance Company is a contemporary dance company in Australia. The company has performed on stages around the world, including the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Joyce Theater in New York, the Shanghai Grand Theatre in China, and the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow.
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Ukrainian dance mostly refers to the traditional folk dances of the Ukrainians as an ethnic group, but may also refer dance of the other ethnic groups within Ukraine. This stylized art form has so permeated the culture of Ukraine, that very few purely traditional forms of Ukrainian dance remain today.
Pavlo Pavlovych Virsky, PAU, was a Soviet and Ukrainian dancer, ballet master, choreographer, and founder of the P. Virsky Ukrainian National Folk Dance Ensemble, whose work in Ukrainian dance was groundbreaking and influenced generations of dancers.
Sydney Festival is a major arts festival in Australia's largest city, Sydney that runs for three weeks every January, since it was established in 1977. The festival program features in excess of 100 events from local and international artists and includes contemporary and classical music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and artist talks. The festival attracts approximately 500,000 people to its large-scale free outdoor events and 150,000 to its ticketed events, and contributes more than A$55 million to the economy of New South Wales.
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Warren John Fahey AM is an Australian folklore collector, cultural historian, author, actor, broadcaster, record and concert producer, visual artist, songwriter, and performer of Australian traditional and related historical music. He is the founder of Folkways Music (1973), Larrikin Records (1974) and a folk music ensemble, the Larrikins (1975).
The Hnat Khotkevych Ukrainian Bandurist Ensemble is a vocal and instrumental Ukrainian folkloric performing ensemble in Sydney, Australia. It was founded in June 1964 by bandurist Hryhory Bazhul and since May 1971 was directed by Peter Deriashnyj.
Guillermo Keys-Arenas — was a dancer and choreographer. He is remembered for his eight-year association with Ballet Folklorico de Mexico for which he was artistic coordinator and ballet master, as well as his contribution to dance in Australia.
Kip Williams is an Australian theatre and opera director. Williams is the current Artistic Director of Sydney Theatre Company. His appointment at age 30 made him the youngest artistic director in the company's history.
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Agris Daņiļevičs is a Latvian choreographer and dance teacher.
Belarusian traditional dance is a form of stage dance known for its originality. The history of Belarus and efforts to preserve Belarusian traditions have shaped the dances in use today, which have many ancient and archaic elements. These dances started to form in the 14th century, and originated in East Slavic rites. In the middle of the 19th century, traditional folk dancing began to merge with quadrilles and polkas from Western Europe.
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