Elected Representatives and Folk Dance (Saga x Nordisk Dans) (11 August)

What happens if you swap the Town Hall floor for a dance floor? We’ll find out this afternoon, when politics puts on its dancing shoes and democracy, for a while, becomes something you can take by the hand and twirl around with.

SAGA and Nordisk Dans invite you to an afternoon where traditional dances and live music take centre stage, and a group of young city councillors step out of the meeting rooms. No speeches, no lecterns. Just steps, rhythm and a sense of community that has existed long before any of us were born.

A dance teacher will guide us through the old steps, whilst the music sets the tempo. You don’t need to know how to dance beforehand. You just need to turn up with a sense of curiosity and a good mood. And you might end up face to face with a politician you’ve otherwise only seen in a debate or on an election poster, now with sweaty palms and a smile, because the steps give us all an equal run for our money. This is folk dance in its purest form. Something we do together, because it’s fun, because it brings us together, and because cultural heritage thrives best when it’s danced, not just talked about.

About the organisers:

SAGA believes that democracy doesn’t just belong in a meeting room. As a non-partisan, democratic youth organisation, we work to ensure that young people are not only heard in democracy, but also feel at home within it. Sometimes that means debates. Other times it means dance floors.

Nordisk Dans began with a handful of young people in Copenhagen who were looking for a place to dance folk dances on their own terms, and found a whole community instead. Today, it is living proof that old traditions do not have to feel old just because they are old.