A few spots remain for Music and Dance Camp

Year over year the Huntsville Festival of the Arts (HFA) comes up with a new and improved line-up of shows, community events, and children’s programs.

There is the ever-evolving Huntsville Art Crawl (more on that in a later post), the Snow Queen production, music and shows at the Algonquin Theatre, and many kids camps.

This year, the HFA is again adding to its offerings with a Music and Dance Camp to be led by Hannah Naiman – who is adept at both those creative endeavours.

“This is a new program for the HFA,” says Naiman. “We have something for visual arts and something for theatre, but we didn’t have something for music and dance. I specialize in those things . . . I’m very excited, it should be fun.”

The week-long program is geared towards children aged 7 to 12. Each day the campers will learn to play the ukelele and practice playing simple folk songs, as well as creating their own crankie machine (think of a picture box), and they will be learning to dance as well.

“We’re going to work on our own crankie machine, so we’re going to take a scroll of paper and we’re going to illustrate the pictures from a song,” says Naiman. “We’re going to learn a song, and we’ll turn the crankie, and as the crankie turns, you’ll see the pictures illustrate the song as we go.”

They’ll be doing some folk dancing, such as a square dance, plus learning easy routines that require both singing and dancing at the same time.

What may be the most fun (at least for some) will be learning a sword dance from England – yes, the dance includes swords. However, for safety’s sake, they will use wood swords that are dull.

“The way it works is every kid is holding the handle of one sword and the point of another sword,” explains Naiman. “So, we’re all connected in a circle. And the dance weaves its way in circles and everyone has a turn making the circle invert and twist around. And at the end we make a beautiful star by putting all the swords together . . . it’s a real teamwork type of dance, it’s really easy but it takes a lot of cooperation.”

After working on all these dances and songs over the week, the campers will then showcase what they’ve learned for family, friends and community members at the Algonquin Theatre.

The program runs Monday, July 29 through Friday, August 2 with full days of fun (8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) at the HFA Studio, 58 Main St. East (entrance accross from River Mill Park).

At the time of this writing, only four spots remained available for the Music and Dance Camp, with two spots also opening up for the previously sold-out Drama Camp (August 12 through August 16).

To register for the Music and Dance Camp, visit https://huntsvillefestival.ca/event/hfa-music-dance-camp/ or to register for the Drama Camp, visit https://huntsvillefestival.ca/event/hfa-summer-drama-camp-3/