50th Ballroom - calling all performers
Ahoy there!
The next Acoustic Ballroom falls on April 2nd - Good Friday. It will also be the 50th Ballroom! The first Ballroom happened on Friday 4th November 2005. The first ever performer was a Mr Gordon Giltrap. Based on an average of 16 acts per Ballroom there have been 784 performances. At least 2 news acts attend each Ballroom, often more, so I reckon there have been between 150 and 200 different acts performing.
I’ve been privileged to see all these acts and it’s hard to imagine a more diverse selection of music. There has been poetry, Viking war dancing, capoeira, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, didgeridoos, cellos, double basses, accordions, oodles of guitars, ukuleles, fiddles, pianos, blues, jazz, rap, folk, rock, singer songwriters, barber shop quartets, drumming groups, story telling, impromptu collaborations, Waltzing Matilda sung backwards and many more. Oh, and Sportsbag surely deserve a special mention! Our youngest ever performer was just 9 and our oldest was, well, much older than that…. Very experienced musicians rub shoulders with people getting up in front of an audience for the first time. One of the great things about running the night is seeing these first time performers really improve both in terms of their ability and their confidence.
We’ve always been lucky with the audiences at the Ballroom. You are just as much a part of making the night what it is as the performers. People are friendly, enthusiastic and really supportive of the people up on stage. Many times I’ve seen people fumble over some chords, or forget the words to a song and you can almost feel the audience willing them on. It’s lovely to see.
So, how to celebrate all this wonderfulness? For the 50th celebrations I’d like to invite as many people that have played at the Ballroom before to come back and give us a song. Asking everyone to play just one song will hopefully mean we can get at least 30 acts up on stage. I’ve also had a suggestion that everyone get on stage together at the end to perform a song. I think this is a great idea. The best suggestion so far has been Hey Jude by the Beatles (in C). This could either work brilliantly or be a complete disaster - either way it’ll be great fun and certainly entertaining. (If anyone has a better idea for a song, just let me know).
So there we go - ramble over. Please come and celebrate the 50th Ballroom with us on Good Friday.
See you there.
Ballroom x