DANCE GROUP PALOINA

Paloina has given some performances in Izmir in Istanbul at the invitation of the Dutch consulate in Turkey. A delegation of the group presented Dutch and Turkish dances in April on several festivals such as the Tulip festival. Paloina will visit Turkey again in July to participate at the Buyukcekmece Festival in Istanbul. Both tours are part of the ‘BIRLIKTE’ project: A cooperation of Turkish and Dutch choreographers and dancers to celebrate 400 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Our own dancers as well as guest dancers take part in the project. The cooperation also concerns the musicians; the normal range of instruments has been extended to some typical Turkish instruments, like davul and kemenche.

In 2012 The Netherlands and Turkey have 400 years of diplomatic relations. In Turkey and The Netherlands we will celebrate this with dance and music.  In the project ‘SAMEN / BIRLIKTE’ we will work on three Turkisch choreografies made by choreografers Ahmet Demirbag and Baykal Dogan. We will perform with these Turkisch dances and our Dutch dances in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and in Istanbul, Turkey.

Paloina was founded in December 1971 by Erda and Johan Baerents. Therefore December 2011 is our birthday! We will celebrate 40 years Paloina with a show and party with the best dance and music of 40 years Paloina. A lot has changed in the past 40 years, the dancers are younger than before, we train them ourselves so they can start at a young age. The internet and social media like Facebook made it easy to make contacts all over the World, so we have more performances in other countries. And our repertoire these days consist of many European, but also non-European dances. Good things stayed from the beginning of our existence and still have great value for us: Paloina still works with guest choreographers specialized in the dance-style that they teach and Paloina still works with their own Paloina-orchestra under direction of Johan Baerents.

Johan and Erda, a lot of ex-dancers and musicians and our loyal audience will celebrate with us in march 2012.

It’s summer, for Paloina that means: FESTIVALS!
Paloina strives to go ”on festival” each year. Sometimes close and sometimes further away. For foreign festivals, we therefore made brochures in English and a separate English website. Dance ensemble Paloina brings theatrical Dutch folkdance and music in authentic costumes. This year, we represent our country at three festivals: On 6 August on the Sivo festival in Odoorn (The Netherlands), August 10 at a festival in De Panne, Belgium and from August 14 to 22 Paloina is guests at the International Folklore Festival of Poznan, Poland.

Today we introduce our English website for all foreign activities. The site mainly provides information on our extensive repertoire of Dutch and our tour history.