Folk Society Seeks Dance Festival Grounds
The Folk Dance and Music Society visited four venues in Tallinn to find a future home for national dance festivals.
Although organizers admit that the traditional site of dance festivals - Kalev stadium - is not equipped for their needs, nor were dancers happy to be squeezed, for the first time, into the same show as the Song Festival this summer, saying that the grass area in front of Tallinn's arched amphitheater is too claustrophobic for the dance program.
Organizers evaluated several potential locations, including the A.Le Coq, Kadriorg and Kalev stadiums, as well as the current Song Festival Grounds, all of which are located in Tallinn. But in the end they decided that, in order to preserve the historic tradition of a separate dance festival, a new stadium must be built. The Ministry of Culture agreed.
One of the options would be to build the stadium in a plot of land beside the current Song Festival Grounds, which could house 20,000 spectators.
The next Song and Dance Festival will be held in 2014, but the new venue would be built by 2019, for the 85th birthday of the Dance Celebration.
Ingrid Teesalu