Show

Friday

All my Life is buried here – The story of George Butterworth + director Q&A

All My Life’s Buried Here - The Story of George Butterworth A Documentary Film

This documentary tells the story of George Butterworth’s life and music for the first time in a film, from his earliest childhood to his final hours in the violent confusion of the trenches. We follow Butterworth on his forays collecting folk songs to discover how they informed his own music. We learn why Butterworth once described himself as a ‘professional morris dancer’, and explore what led him to destroy so many of his own compositions before he died. Tracing his journey to its tragic conclusion we go with Butterworth into the trenches of northern France where he eventually led a battalion of Durham miners.

Featuring classic recordings of Butterworth’s music by the London Philharmonic under Sir Adrian Boult, plus exclusive live performances by Roderick Williams OBE, folk singer Peta Webb and archive recordings of English folk singers, this is a powerful portrait documentary revealing the emotional heart of George Butterworth’s remarkable story.

Saturday

Student Artist Concert

Join Dee Wright – the presenter of University Radio York’s popular show ‘For Folk’s Sake!’ on an exploration of the work of the country’s talented student musicians. Taking in a diverse range of Instrumental and vocal music; whether you need a break from the dancing or are looking out for a new musical rabbit hole this event is not one to miss!

Featuring

University of Kent folkshop

Heather (Flute), Emma (Flute) and George (Fiddle) and play all kinds of folk music including traditional English, Scottish, Irish and Swedish tunes. They hve been playing together for the last 3 years (our whole time at university). They have been performing at open days, pub sessions and festivals and very much look forward to playing in this concert at IVFDF.

Alex Skinner

A Bristol based piano accordionist currently studying in York, with a background in dance music. With his unique playing style, he plays an instrumental repertoire arranged from traditional and original tunes.

Rowan Scourfield

A talented young singer songwriter, based in Hitchin, Herts. With roots from both Folk music and Rock music Rowan creates a unique sound that captures his identity

Ada Wood and Georgie Rix

Central to the collaboration between Ada Wood and Georgie Rix is a desire to break the mould of conventional roles in both music and society.

Displaying an attentive understanding of space and melodic communication within their unique blend of two voices, fiddle and viola, Ada and Georgie create refined and heartfelt arrangements. Masterfully applying a grass-roots backgrounds in folk traditions and techniques to contemporary and globally inspired repertoire, they carry you through tear-jerking lows to foot stomping highs

Ghost Tour

Dances

Friday

Ceilidh

FiddlersWreck Ceilidh Band have been playing for ceilidhs across Yorkshire and beyond for over 20 years with a lively repertoire of tunes and dances to get everyone up on their feet. Expect a mixture of dances you recognise and some you may not, including some of Michael’s own.

Contra

Bluejay is Benjamin Rowe (Bearded Dragons, Contrasaurus) Joshua Webster (Contrary Faeries) and Nicky McConkey (Chaotic Good, Definitely Contraband). Combining the power of three fiddles, they play driving, exciting and lyrical music for contra dancing.

Bal

Caro Appleby and James Rhodes have been playing together for nearly as long as they’ve known each other. Their experience taking European tunes out of their comfort zone in larger bands like Trip Hazard and Portmanteau has taught them exactly what makes the music work for dancers. As Flying Cat, they strip the sound back to flute and melodeon, playing a mix of traditional and modern European repertoire that just feels right to dance to.

With thanks to the Society for International Folk Dancing for sponsoring this event.

Late Night Dancing

Dance the night away. Anyone can call, anyone can play, anything can be danced.

Saturday

Persistent Playford

What happens when you look at Constant Contra and go “yes…but Playford”.

Allow a handful of callers to guide you through a persistent string of Playford dances – no walkthroughs and no interruptions. Limited teaching of figures will be done at the start.

Scottish Country Dance

Programme

• Liquid Assets (J8x32) 3C (4C set)
• The Royal Deeside Railway (R8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Sandy O’Er The Lea (S8x32) 2C (4C set)
• The Wild Geese (J8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Gordon’s Cider Press (R5x32) 5C Sq.Set
• The Falkirk Lass (S8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Gaelforce Wind (J8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Crom Allt (The Crooked Burn) (R8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Friendships (S4x32) 4C set
• Fair Enough (J4x32) 4C set
• The Dancing Bees (R8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Langholm Fair (S3x32) 3C set
• The Carefree Highway (J8x32) 3C (4C set)
• Peridot And Sapphire (S3x32) 3C set
• The De’il Amang The Tailors (R8x32) 3C (4C set)

Full cribs for the dances can be found in this PDF.

Canna’Laigh has been playing for Scottish Ceilidhs and Country Dances nationwide for many years, including for IVFDF in Sheffield last year. The band is lead by Bernard on diatonic button accordion, with Jill on flute and Anna on fiddle. Their foot-tapping jigs, reels and strathspeys are sure to have everyone up and dancing!

Display Ceilidh

A ceilidh with a difference, between the normal ceilidh dances there will be lots of display spots where you can come and show off the display dance your university society has put together. From amazingly sublime dances to sublimely silly dances (think Lord of the Rings themed Postie’s Jig or Scottish meets Monty Python).

What is the display ceilidh and who should sign up?

Way way back many centuries ago, IVFDF actually included an intervarsity dance competition. Over the years, the competition was lost, but the fun opportunity to do a dance for all the other universities to watch and cheer remains! Displays are particularly welcome from university folk dance societies - it is an excellent IVFDF if every university attending does a display at the display ceilidh. We also welcome displays from the morning workshops - one year the mumming workshop brought their play to the display ceilidh! We love to have other displays as well if there is time for them. Displays can be to live music or recorded music, we have had everything from a single fiddle player to Pitbull’s Timber.

Just sign up for a display on the list at reception if you want to display. The order will be chosen based on who signs up, but let us know if there are times at the display ceilidh that will be difficult for you

You may sign up for a practice slot when the hall is free between 14:00 - 15:00, if you want to try dancing your display in the space.

Ness’ Monsters is a ceilidh band based in York, leading dances for groups of all ages, sizes and levels of experience. Whether this is your first ceilidh, or you’ve danced many times before, you’ll enjoy many of the Scottish classics, with a few of our favourite Irish and English dances thrown in for good measure. Featuring violin, flute, guitar, keys, bass and drums, Ness’ Monsters creates a big sound and hopefully, big fun too!

Playford

Enjoy an afternoon of dancing from the 17th and 18th century, based around the dances published by John Playford, danced as they should be danced - fun, with lots of energy and to wonderful music.

Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer have played for dance at clubs, festivals and social events all across the country. Musical chameleons, they regularly play for Ceilidh, Contra, ECD and Scandinavian dances. When the need calls, they have the right hats and indeed the right instruments for Medieval, Renaissance and Regency dancing too. They effortlessly blend traditional material with original tunes so you won’t know where the traditional and the modern. When given the freedom of ceilidh, expect driving tunes and a sound way bigger than two people should by rights create. if you’re up for multitasking, there may be choruses to sing while you’re still dancing!

Contra

Trip Hazard are a new Contra dance band, featuring an unusual mixture of instruments.

To help keep you dancing, our piano and bodhran do all the driving, and our multiple saxophones involve the operation of heavy machinery.

Side effects do NOT include drowsiness!

Ceilidh

Banter are Nina Zella, Simon Care and Tim Walker. Three fine musicians whose roots are firmly in the traditional English genre, but who enjoy stretching the limits – in what a lot of people refer to as “the quirky Banter twist”. Formed in 2015, due to a happy accident, they immediately realised their common love for traditional English song and dance and began to mess around with it. They gained popularity, or should it be notoriety, very quickly and were soon performing at many of the country’s largest festivals, including Glastonbury, Cambridge FF, Sidmouth FF and Towersey. Now firmly established as one of the UK’s finest bands they have recorded their fourth studio album “Heroes”. Their second album of traditional material ….. but with that “twist” Described as “the world’s smallest big band”, Banter go from strength to strength.

“Banter were amazing. Fantastic harmonies and great playing” – Ralph McTell 2023

Bal

Doug Eunson (Melodeon / Hurdy Gurdy) and Sarah Matthews (Fiddle) perform for energetic ceilidh, concerts and Euro Bal dances.

“They are a duo that performs like a much larger group with dynamic vocals, great harmonies, warm stage presence and first rate instrumentals.”

For ceilidh, they pick great English traditional and self-penned melodies, enriched with harmony, and strong driving groove! They are experienced dancers themselves, and play for dancing regularly.

In their concert sets, Doug (Voice, Melodeon) and Sarah (Voice, Five-String Fiddle) use their natural, expressive musicality to craft their arrangements with style and intuitive elegance. As well as drawing on some of the finest English folk song repertoire to sing in breathtaking harmony, they play English and European dance music in outstanding instrumentals and beautifully flowing tune sets.

Late Night Dancing

Dance the night away. Anyone can call, anyone can play, anything can be danced.

Sunday

Constant Contra

Just Keep Dancing! Allow a cavalcade of IVFDF’s finest contra dance callers to guide you through a constant stream of contra dance – no walkthroughs and no interruptions! If you want a break or to ask somebody else to dance, just stop dancing at the end of the set and join back in when you’re ready. Suitable for dancers comfortable with common contra figures.

Survivors' Ceilidh

Celebrate the end of another fantastic IVFDF by calling, playing and/or dancing at our survivors’ ceilidh!

There will be a sign up sheet for calling at the reception and Stephanie Martin will be leading the IVFDF Scratch Band (Scratch band rehearsals are on Saturday and Sunday mornings).

What is the survivors’ ceilidh and who should sign up?

The last dance of IVFDF is a scratch ceilidh where each dance is called by a different person. This is a great opportunity to introduce a pile of keen folkies to dances you love, get some practice calling in a friendly space where you only have to call one dance, (and maybe people will notice your calling and book you for more gigs!)

Callers must call gender neutral and pick a dance that the scratch band can play for (see IVFDF website for scratch band tune book).

We especially welcome student callers, young callers, career-young callers, and callers who have not called at IVFDF before. We will prioritise these if we get too many callers - but there is usually space for old favourite callers too!

Dancers will have a wide variety of dancing experience and be very tired by Sunday afternoon, so friendly accessible ceilidh dances are excellent choices. Please do not call a dance that has not been danced before.

Just sign up on the list at reception if you want to call a dance.

Workshops

Saturday

Early Morning Chorus Songs

Too tired from last night’s dances? Well look no further than Early Morning Chorus Songs, a laid back singaround.

Collegiate Shag - African American Swing Dance

A partnered swing dance originating in African-American communities of the early 20th century. It is danced to uptempo jazz music which can also have European Folk influences.

Micro-balfolk

Explore balfolk dancing in miniature. Instead of traveling across the floor, we’ll dance on the spot using tiny, intricate movements. Discover how to express the music through subtle shifts, small gestures, and delicate shapes with different parts of your body.

This workshop uses close embrace as the primary dance hold, with variation in how close partners choose to be. We’ll discuss how to communicate and negotiate comfort levels with your dance partners. The focus is on clear communication and practicing both leading and following within a minimal space.

Portuguese Folk Dance

Learn Portuguese Folk Dances found at festivals and social events. Not performance dances per se, but inclusive social dances. The dances we have in mind are in twos, fours and one progressive. Gender free calling.

Beginners Contra

Easy Contra for beginners to try Contra dancing, a social dance that one can attend without a partner. All moves explained & walked through - fun for beginners and experienced dancers alike!

Entangling Plants and Humans - The Folklore and Magic of Plants

This will be a guided walk and talk looking at the folklore and myths of some British plants and our embodied reactions to them, with an alternative of an art based collage session if particularly bad weather. Wear something warm and waterproof (if raining)!

Northern Italian Folk Dance

Are you ready to gallop in an explosive social dance that survived decades in remote Italian mountains? Would you like to discover a playful foreign repertoire? Northern Italy has a strong and rich tradition of folk dance and music. The selected dances are energetic and joyful, easy to learn, and with a social purpose. We are going to teach mostly group dances and a couple dance. The workshop is suited for beginners.

Regency Dance

I’ll be trying my best to get you Ball ready with some triple minors, cotillions and a very strange dance from Ukraine.

Scratch Band (Part 1)

Run through the tunes which will be used in the survivors’ ceilidh. A great chance to play for a ceilidh if you have always wanted to but haven’t had the chance or just play through some tunes with people. Come to one or both of the workshops.

The tunes that will be played can be found in the tune book.

If you play a transposing instrument there is also versions in Bb and Eb. Please contact us if you need it in a different transposition or clef.

Bal-folk Improv

This workshop will provide some practical basic tips and techniques to make you feel comfortable with improvising with your partner(s) on bal folk dances, especially couple dances and bourrées. Some of that dance improv techniques will be derived from improv acting techniques and will provide a simple framework to let you go wherever the music takes you. Some basic knowledge of bal folk dances is advised.

Border Morris

It’s the 18th or 19th century, it’s winter, and it’s cold. The agricultural workers in the Welsh Marshes have no work and no money left, so they disguise themselves by pinning odd rags on their normal clothes, smearing their faces with soot from the fire and going to the houses of the local gentry. You could describe what they did there as dancing with noise, energy and big sticks out of the hedgerows. You could (and the local magistrates did) also describe it as begging with menaces (and those very big sticks). They were perpetrating Border Morris.

Border Morris usually involves quite simple, but vigorous, stepping, typically a step-hop. A few traditional dances were recorded but, since the revival in the 1970s, many more new dances have been written in the style (or, at least, our best guess as to the style…). We will be looking at one of the newer dances.

If there is sufficient interest, it may be possible to dance it as a workshop display in the Display Ceilidh on Saturday afternoon. Please bring energy, enthusiasm and shock-absorbing footwear! Additional musicians are also welcome, especially at the ceilidh spot

Both Sides Now Contra

This is a workshop of contra dances in which the choreography makes dancers swap roles with their partner within the dance – or looking at it another way, dances in which there are no roles and instead everyone dances the whole dance. The formation was invented simultaneously by Sam Tetley-Smith and Louise Siddon. People should be physically capable of swinging with both left and right pointy hands, and they should come wearing contra-dance-appropriate clothing, including shoes.

Tudor Dancing in England

Learn dances from when English country dances were born!

Session

Come and play some tunes.

Sunday

CANCELLED - Inclusion/Seated/Disabled Folk Dance

CANCELLED due to workshop leader availablity.

Able-bodied and Disabled dancers (experts by experience) welcome. As well as practical try-out-seated-dance, the session could be an excellent forum for sharing good practice, opening up FAQ etc. Aspects – from many years’ experience – of taking dance to care homes, dementia groups etc; touches on some ways of supporting disabled dancers in performance groups e.g. morris. Note: disability refers not to only limited mobility but also visual / hearing impairments, learning disability etc.

CANCELLED - Session on the Radio

CANCELLED due to workshop leader illness.

Session on the radio! Come down and have a go at being on the airwaves, we’ll be doing a live radio broadcast of a folk session on University Radio York

Scottish Reeling

Fancy trying out a bit of Scottish reeling?

Whether you are a regular at local ceilidhs or have never heard of Scottish country dancing or reeling before, we would love for you to come along and give our beginner-friendly workshop a go!

Reeling is a social, beginner friendly form of dancing with most dances using repeat patterns of basic moves (setting, turning, casting off and figure of eights). There are over 11,000 reels that exist nowadays, although don’t fret, we’ll only be teaching a few!

IVFDF Reps Meeting

Come along to the IVFDF annual reps meeting if you want to learn more about how the festival is run, or you’re interested in running IVFDF yourself. We will give a break-down of 2026, decide plans for 2027 and discuss any improvements for future IVFDFs. Each university society should send 2 reps to vote.

Scottish Country Dance

Come kick your heels to the jigs and reels, and enjoy the elegance of the strathspey. We can look at the steps and formations unique to Scottish country dancing. Suitable for all.

Intro into Solo Jazz

Solo jazz is one of the groups of swing dances that evolved out of the African American communities in the US in the early 1900s. Danced to swing music, solo jazz is energetic, explosive and contagiously fun. We’ll teach a short routine to introduce you to the dance, suitable for someone who has never danced jazz before.

Scratch Band (Extra)

Due to cancellation of Radio session -a chance for me scratch band tunes.

Run through the tunes which will be used in the survivors’ ceilidh. A great chance to play for a ceilidh if you have always wanted to but haven’t had the chance or just play through some tunes with people. Come to one or both of the workshops.

The tunes that will be played can be found in the tune book.

If you play a transposing instrument there is also versions in Bb and Eb. Please contact us if you need it in a different transposition or clef.

Foraging and folklore

An informal walk to get outdoors for some fresh air and learn about the nature around the campus. Max (@maximossnature) will introduce some foraging tips and share a few folklore stories! Wear sturdy boots and warm clothes.

Kentucky Running Set

Similar to American Square Dance. A brisk dance form involving choruses and a variety of fun figures such as “Shoot the Buffalo”, “Wild Goose Chase” and “Rattlesnake Twist”.

Maypole

If you’ve never danced around a maypole with a ribbon, you’re missing out. It is the best. I’ll be bringing my maypole and both going over my most popular dances and passing on some tips for those who want to run their own maypole session in the future. If you’ve been to my workshops before I have some new dances to try out! Children are welcome.

Playing for Balfolk

A workshop on how to play Balfolk music for dancing (with dancing from some experienced Balfolk dancers!). Learn about the different music that fits the most common Balfolk dances, and how to make sure you’re playing at the right speed with the right emphasis for specific dances. Bring along instruments! Sheet music provided. Learn from experienced players for the Bal sessions in Hay-on-Wye!

Border Morris

Learn IVFDF Morris Tour hosts Ramshackle’s original dance, Tup’s Turn, to the tune of John Ryans. The product of a foreman creating a chorus, then the rest of us going mad and writing the figures in one practice. Expect lots of spinning, sticking and fun! Some Morris experience is preferable, but not required!

Scratch Band (Part 2)

Run through the tunes which will be used in the survivors’ ceilidh. A great chance to play for a ceilidh if you have always wanted to but haven’t had the chance or just play through some tunes with people. Come to one or both of the workshops.

The tunes that will be played can be found in the tune book.

If you play a transposing instrument there is also versions in Bb and Eb. Please contact us if you need it in a different transposition or clef.

Cotswold Morris - Bledington Tradition

Learn William and Nancy in the Bledington tradition from one of Black Diamond’s finest. Bring hankies if you have them, and wear comfortable shoes. Not suitable for absolute beginners.

Central Javanese Gamelan

An introduction to the very basics of traditional gamelan music from Java using the university’s very own ensemble Gamelan Sekar Petak! This will involve playing a range of gongs and metallophones, singing and sitting on the floor with your shoes off (wear your best socks!)

Harmony Singing

Come and learn some folk songs and sing them in beautiful harmony with the wonderful Fylingdales Folk Choir, based in Whitby.

Welsh Dancing

Whether you’ve never done any folk dancing at all or are a Welsh-dancing pro, come along to this workshop where we’ll be learning several dances ranging from 17th century jigs to modern day reels. Danced in pairs and groups and consisting of different combinations of basic steps combined with fun elements, dawnsio gwerin is beginner-friendly and easy to learn. Come along and experience the fun that’s the reason these dances are now performed all over the world!

Appalachian Clogging Beginners

Appalachian clogging is a high-energy, percussive folk dance that originated in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, blending British Isles, African, and Native American traditions. Characterized by rapid, rhythmic, and intricate footwork. Wear hard soled or tap shoes.

English Beyond Playford

This is a workshop of English dances beyond the Playford Dancing Master. There are literally thousands of dances that aren’t in Playford but were enthusiastically danced between 1700 and today – let’s fight monopolies and dance them! Clothes and shoes suitable for energetic dancing advised.

Friday

Saturday

Sunday