August 2004

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Heritage Festival Features a Wedding!
by Jan Powers

“A Central Asian Wedding,” performed by the Silk Road Dance Company, will be one of the featured acts at the thirteenth annual Adams County Heritage Festival, scheduled for Sunday, September 19 at the Gettysburg Recreation Park, Long Lane. Featuring sumptuous costumes and unusual dance techniques, the performance will include Uzbek, Afghani, Tadjik, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Iranian, and Egyptian dances, offering a unique glimpse of the life, culture, and art of regions little known to the US.

Founded in 1995, the ensemble takes its name from the fabled trade route where their dances originated. Founder Laurel Victoria Gray has lived for two years in Uzbekistan at the invitation of Tashkent's State Academic Bolshoi Theatre, and she teaches dance as adjunct faculty at George Mason and George Washington Universities. Although the Silk Road dancers are stretching the capacity of the Heritage Festival by requiring us to upgrade our performance facilities and provide a dressing room, we are delighted to feature them, along with “Ulali,” a nationally known trio of First Nation women singers.

Putting on the Heritage Festival becomes more of a challenge each year, according to Festival Chair Bill Collinge, who tirelessly holds together the Planning Committee and worries about details, such as bees and rain and not enough tents. Nancy Konopka, who has planned the outstanding schedule of children’s activities at Festivals in recent years, works long and hard to provide materials for stimulating crafts and experiences in keeping with the Festival theme of educating ourselves about other cultures. Megan Weikel contacts scores of non‑profit organizations, inviting them to rent booths and share their services with the broad cross-section of the community who attend the Festival. Lynda Taylor and Rosie Bolen have taken over from Tricia Pitney the time-consuming task of contacting vendors and lining up displays and craft demonstrators.

Of course we can't have a Festival without food, and so we look to Candace Desonier to contact ethnic food vendors, which this year will include Thai, Mexican, Greek, Italian, Indian and Soul food, along with goodies from Ross’s Reads and Jasper’s Juices. Candace is also helpful in finding entertainment, and to her we owe not only the presence of “Ulali” at this year’s Festival, but also “Clogged Up and Strung Out,” Freya Qually’s band of Appalachian fiddlers and cloggers. Good old fashioned Dixieland will also be part of the program, thanks to the Fire City Jazz Band, from Mount Saint Mary’s University. Our mission? To celebrate our cultures through music, food, and the arts–to learn about who we are and where we come from.

How do we go about financing a Festival on a shoestring? We’ve been blessed with generous funders, who have almost always given us what we asked for. This year’s contributions include a Star grant from the Adams County Arts Council, a gift from the LeVan Foundation, funding from the Robert C. Hoffman Endowment Trust, and a regrant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts. Jan Powers writes the grant proposals, George Gelles keeps the books, and Tom Kiniry and Mary Patrick do the legwork for the program ads. Mary, who has been with the Festival since it began in 1991, is also the Local Arrangements Coordinator; her job involves everything from working with the County Commissioners to obtaining donations of delicious fruit from the Rice Fruit Company. We think we've become a county institution by now, but we always need more volunteers to plan and carry out the Festival. If you’d like to help, call 334-0752 or contact our Volunteer Coordinator, Cynthia Reimel, at the YWCA, 334-9171.

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Last updated August 15, 2004

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