When you get to that age, it is time to party! And that is exactly what happened in June this year, when the city of Aileenburg, situated in the north of Saxony, Germany, celebrated its 1,050th anniversary with a three day celebration! And it all ended up with a world record led by our very own Maggie
Gallagher....This report was written by Katja Budich, daughter of one of the Featherdancers.
During the three day extravaganza in
Eileenburg, one of the main attractions was a stage nearby the pub, ‘Limerick’, where Maggie met lots of Line dancers. The local Line dance group ‘The Featherdancers’ had suggested to invite her to teach some workshops on stage. Maggie agreed and after an initial meeting with the group and trying some steps, she started writing a grand opening for the next day. Line dancers jumped at every opportunity to take photos with Maggie and to get to know her a little bit better. Everybody was bowled over by her and she certainly added a lot more dancers to her fan base that weekend.
On Saturday, the joint opening was a
big surprise – you could definitely feel excitement in the air and the audience went really wild. Maggie’s first workshop quickly followed with Jig About. A wonderful wooden floor of 850 square metres had been built up in the week before. This had been made possible by spillling over into the main street, removing lots of street signs along the way but the effort was definitely worth it! A lot of dancers had enough space to move and dance at the same time. Everyone there loved every second of it!
At three pm business became serious.
A new world record was supposed to be established. The brief was simple, we needed as many Line dancers as possible, coming from as many clubs as possible and we wanted them to dance three numbers, with and choreographed by, Maggie. And we did it!
753 Line dancers of more than 60 different
clubs came and danced ‚Shamrock Soup‘, ‘Where I Belong’ and ‘Leaving Of Liverpool’ together. In addition, the Intermediate dancers also made ‘Celtic Reel’ and ‘Irish Spirit’. Fantastic! Everybody felt a sense of achievement and the organisers were delighted. As for the Mayor, who was watching the dancing from the stage, let us just say he was simply stunned.
After this great event Maggie had another
surprise. She taught a workshop with her brand new choreography ‘The Flute’. This song was sent to her by Reiner Bernhardt, the chairman of The Featherdancers. Maggie fell in love with this song immediately and wrote the steps within one hour, as she told the Line dancers on Friday evening. And very graciously, Maggie then dedicated those steps to Reiner and The Featherdancers. We could not wait to learn the steps and dance this fantastic new choreography.
The day finally ended with another
workshop, this time it was Love Bucket and a review of all the new dances. It is fair to say that all the dancers will remember the lovely exciting time in Eilenburg. So many people sent us letters, emails and messages that told us how popular this event was. We hope everybody will come back in 2013, when The Featherdancers celebrate their tenth anniversary. We are looking forward to being able to welcome you all and dance some more together.
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