What you need to have a good Folklorama pavilion!
First let me say that I am officially a Folklorama goer! An Expert if you will! A trained professional even! How is that, well I have been going to this celebration of our cities culture since I was a small kid, that’s 40 years of going to the largest cultural festival in north America! My father played in the famous Mug Pub and my mom, sister and brother and I traveled around Folklorama from one pavilion to another and we still do! Well, now a days its just my mom and I, but we still trooper on to the different pavilions and grab a bit of food, take in the cultural displays and watch some entertainment every summer when the event is on. Now, we have cut back a lot since I got married and had a kid, its only fair to not do three pavilions a night both weeks, actually it used to be one week from what I recall, and smartly they extended it to two!
Anyways, I have seen pavilions come and pavilions go. Some left because they just did not make sense…like the USA pavilion….and some left with out making any sense…like us not having ANY sort of aboriginal pavilion this year…what is with that?
For those that have never gone to a single pavilion let me tell you a few things, there are great ones, and there are ROTTEN ones. One of the Great ones is one I would like to welcome back….the UK pavilion. First off its not Mug Pub, but its darn close. They have all the four key elements that you need for a good Pavilion and some are missing that generally take away from a pavilions ability to be seen as great.
So, what are the great things you need, the four golden points that can be seen as markers in the “great Pavilion” hierarchy of pavilions? Food! Live entertainment! Well practiced performers! And great food….er cultural displays that are live and relevant.
Lets look at the last one first. The cultural displays should look newer, not like you knocked the dust off them and threw them out for the display. They need to look new and fresh, and relevant. I actually saw a map with a pre WWII boarder on it! And it was not for the country that was being displayed…..and when I asked they said it was an older map…Yah, older like 50 years older! New maps are cheap, especially for European countries. If you simply don’t care then screw it and move on! The display also has to look well put together, not like it was a kids social studies project. Now, I have to admit that most of the displays are “nice” but some of the newer ones are fantastic and covered in cultural identity. The Punjab pavilion stands out in my mind as does the Slovenia one. New displays that are fresh and tight.
The food, well the food speaks volumes about a pavilion. Is it fresh, well cooked and taste original to the country of origin? I had a horrible experience two years in a row at the Chinese pavilion with limp veggies, food that looked like it sat under a heat lamp for hours and basically looked like something you pick up in a food court. It was horrible. Even my favorite spring roll was soggy! The Pilipino one last year had a great cultural display and the darn food was so great my mom and I were tempted to go back this year again….and we should have skipped the Chinese one and done the pearl of the orient.
The new pavilions, England and Punjab, had food that was off the chain. The Punjab was a surprise to me, I was expecting far more hot food, with Curry melting my face, it was not like that at all! The flavor of the Goat (yes, never had that before) was fantastic, and the curry potatoes were delicious. The only down side was I was not ready for the desert ball and it kind of sat in me heavy, but I am sure if I was aware of this effect going into this I would have had half of it and enjoyed it as a desert. The British pavilion had OFF THE HOOK food, great Shepard’s pie, fish and chips were decent and the filo pastry dish with sausage in it was great too. Really worth going to this pavilion just for the food.
The performers need to be well practiced as well. By this I mean not a week of dance lessons and choreographing from your aunt or friends mom and away you go. The pavilions performers really make the whole show, and without professionally developed programs you miss out. A few shining examples of great groups would again be England and Punjab. Now the English pavilion takes it to another level, but they have a dance group that is both entertaining and well trained. They stole this year’s Folklorama for us. They also had a great English singer that came out to entertain with his guitar, something that gives and inviting and non-threatening approach. It was truly fantastic. The African/Caribbean pavilion had a great limbo dancer and some cute kids dancing. Very interesting and kept the flow of the program going. Brazil was probably the most entertaining I have been to….both of them. The samba dancers and Capoeira fighters were entertaining, unique and well the girls were almost wearing a interesting outfit! Point being that the program was interesting and kept you watching.
Some programs fall to far into a kids dance recital. You watch board and you hope the food is better or the display is interesting enough to make you not feel ripped off. Don’t get me wrong, the odd kids dance class can be fun to watch, but if they come out unprepared in really bad costumes and kind of move about looking un prepared then you have an issue.
Worse yet is the unengaging adult dancers who look totally unprepared and like they never rehearsed the show at all. The south Sudanese pavilion was one that almost makes you feel uncomfortable watching them because the adults, some of them at least, looked like they were board, dressed in a tiger skin pelt that did not cover their everyday clothing and kind of made everyone feel a tad uncomfortable. More practice I think would make this show really pop. Now having said that the stage size of some of these places is not enough to put on a real show. You need space to dance and in defense of the poor south Sudanese pavilion dancers, they were all dancing on a postage stamp. Whoever choreographed that really needs lessons on special requirements in dance or at the least special aesthetics in dance!
Not to rag on South Sudan to much longer but you look at the stage size at the German Pavilion, not very big, but they had less dancers and they used the space well. A lesson for the future perhaps but I can say, I wont be back because of how uncomfortable I felt watching the dancers on a postage stamp. Oh, and the facilities were FAR to small for a pavilion to be well put on. That’s another part about the pavilion that really stunk, it was so darn small.
Last but not least is the live music. This can really put a pavilion over the top and its something that the British Pavilion does well. They don’t used “Canned” music! Its like going to a concert and worth the couple of bucks for the night out, and a variety of kinds of music two, two bands at any time….a piper and Friday night a rock bank…what the what! That’s a damn fine Pavilion, hell that’s a killer concert and dinner experience that they could put on year round….or at least a few times a year!
My mom and I both commented on two pavilions this year that really missed the mark. First the Spanish pavilion. Never mind the crappy food we had that made me sick and all tasted horrible or the tiny cultural display that looked like an afterthought, focus on the show. Beautiful young ladies dancing very lively with castanets, well-practiced and dressed in traditional clothing that took you away to a Spanish dance party….but canned music. So, they basically phoned in part of the entertainment by not having live music. No one bothered to see if they could find a flamenco guitar player or band in the city? It really put a damper on things.
The German pavilion gets a wee bit of a pass on this one. They had a live band ready to go and entertained before the dances, but the atmosphere changed on a dime and they went from Umpa band to ROCK AN DROLL German style. I actually have a hard time getting that damn German toon out of my head! While the band sat idly by they put on a rock show with more lively dancers and some crowd participation (of which I am not a huge fan, and did not join in, but they made it look fun) the whole thing was more modern and much more entertaining than the strange OLD Person sing song that cut the show in half. It could have been smoother but screw it…its rock and they won the world cup…so they are going to milk that for a while!
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