February 2017 Update

BCFestival 2017 in Region 2                                                   Thurs. to Sat. July 6, 7, 8, 2017
By Wendy Krueger, Co-Chair                                                 VENUE: Cloverdale Rodeo Grounds
     December went by in a blur what with all of the wonderful Christmas parties and preparations and potluck dinners and yours truly did not write anything to be published in the January Valley Circle.
     Numbers mean a lot. A friend asks you how many of your family and/or friends came for Christmas dinner. She learns a lot from your answer, such as how much food preparation you did, the relative complexity of seating everyone, and the level of emotional intensity that the occasion brought.
     Your friend, knowing your family, will know how elaborate your menu likely was. Her “read” of your party includes the volume of food you bought and possibly the variety, too, because if your son hates pumpkin pie but everyone else loves it and only gets it at Christmas at your house, you will have made more than one pie. And if your daughters are the two vegetarians in the family, you prepared your turkey but also a meatless protein dish and your stuffing didn’t have giblets and you didn’t put it inside the turkey. If there were fourteen people, you prepared three vegetable dishes and salad, but if there were only six to feed, you made two vegetables and probably forgot to put out the pickled onions!
     Seating everyone can be quite a task, but having had your family for decades, you’ve probably got it figured out. Maybe you have an old door and sawhorses that make up a trestle table in the rec room when you have a large crowd, or maybe you serve buffet style and everyone sits in the living room with their plates on TV tables or on their laps. A smaller group probably was accommodated at your kitchen table.
     The pleasure, the fun, the outpourings of love and laughter, the good humoured joking, and the general furor of getting together of course rises with the size of your party. So your friend, who knows how your family “clicks,” with that one question, has gauged not only how hard you worked to enjoy Christmas dinner, but also your happiness with the whole event. And that, my friend, is what she really wanted to know all along.
     Your festival committee is preparing to put on a wonderful festival be it two hundred people or eight hundred people, like we had in 2005. The callers and cuers, venue, and décor will all be great!
     Here is a number that means a lot to your BCFestival committee. Our number of registrations for BCFestival 2017 as of January 10th is 195. We are forecasting the total number based on how many have registered so far.  If 195 were the total number for our event, it wouldn’t be big, but it would more dancers than, say, the Sweetheart Gala that’s on this month. The Gala, though, is a Plus dance.  Twenty squares of Plus. For Festival, maybe we should be able to anticipate that many Plus dancers AND at least thirty squares of mainstream dancers, AND a few squares of Advanced as well.
     How many more will register? Hmmm, maybe what has happened in the past could help us predict. In June 1993, Chilliwack hosted the provincial festival. By January 1993, 43% of the total was registered.
     QUICK! Do the math! If this is indicative of a pattern of human behaviour, and if the pattern holds true, OH MY GOODNESS!! Could it be? Is it possible? Both methods of predicting come up in the mid-400’s. YES, it could be, and YES it is possible. Wow! This is going to be one terrific event, and, for many of you, it will be the biggest event of your square dance experience. Right here in our own region.
     Come on! Let’s get those remaining 57% of registrations pouring in! We are on our way to one fabulous three-day party!!