So far this has been the most fun concert of the Tobotorsdag series. Tensta is close enough to here that a number of the faces were already familiar from festivals/jams around Uppland. They’re an energetic bunch, and they clearly enjoy playing together. The program was fairly well polished and wide ranging, beginning with a couple of numbers from their Xmas rep (entertaining arrangements of “Winter wonderland” and “Santa Claus is coming to town”) and then settling into a more usual diet of mostly-trad, mostly-Swedish, finishing up with a rousing Russian number.
The instrumental and dance groups have some overlap in membership, so a few hardy souls were on stage [sic] the whole time. The dance group’s rep had some choreographed couple-dance-in-a-ring sorts of things that reminded me of Danish dances, and some sets that looked just like English ceilidh dances, and some quadrilles. There was a waltz quadrille set to a waltz tune we had just learned from Olov the previous day.
I present here a (very dark) video of a schottis quadrille, because I had never heard of such a thing so maybe you haven’t either. I missed the very first bit, but it was the same as the end. Pretty neat, huh?
