I would like to mention several accompanying events which will be part of Bernard's Summer School 2011, some of them are also accessible to the public.
The Opening night is always held the day prior to the commencement of lessons and the venue is the school gym at Zárubova. It is by no means mandatory, but it rather aims to provide summer school participants with the first opportunity to get acquainted. Participation of guests accommodated elsewhere and Prague residents is of course also welcome. The evening is usually filled with dances and we are usually trying to include dances from different regions. Besides the Irish we usually have Breton and Scottish ones and this year we are also promised some English dances. The evening will begin at 20:00 p.m.

I would like to notify you about BSS 2011 information including classes and teachers which is now available on our website. You can access it from the banner on the main page of our website. You can reserve your place in each class you want to participate in, by completing application form which is also included in the information. Your name will be displayed on the list of participants in this section of our website as soon as we receive your application form. 

Although it is still quite some time until the next Summer School, we are not being idle. We are contemplating the programme composition – dancing, music, singing and language, as well as its structure. We are wondering whether two- or three-hour blocks are the ideal form. We are considering the teachers and of course also the Final Evening programme. That is also connected to the question where should the Final Evening take place. Many participants recall the Ponec Theatre and thus we are also considering this option. 


 

   
Final evening (8th Summer School)

We are happy to announce that video documentation of BSS 2010 is now
available. Don't hesitate with order, it's a limited edition!
DVD contains:

The extensive picture material from Bernard's Summer School 2010 is slowly coming into a form which can be very soon distributed among those who are interested. It will be a DVD that contains a documentary by Pavel Klener about BSS 2010 - is an 11-minute film which goes through all the lessons and key accompanying events of the Summer School.

     There will also be 150-minutes capturing the Final Evening of BSS 2010, where apart from the participants’ performances the DVD owners will be also able to recall our teachers and last but not least, the guests - Emma O'Sullivan, John O'Halloran and James Devine.

Only a short time has passed since the end of the Summer School and it is too soon for a definitive evaluation. However, feelings and opinions of participants and teachers are already starting to penetrate to us through various communication channels. These freshest feelings are usually the truest ones. After some time one usually resigns, time blurs some of it and let's face it, our memory fades because it is not infallible.

And so perhaps just some statistics right at the start (although nobody does it in this industry, we like to boast how many participants we had ;-)
BSS 2010 was attended by 143 persons and these persons applied to attend 208 activities. We appreciate that many approached their summer school participation as a full-time job and have signed up for 2 or more lessons. Of these 143 persons, there were 113 from the CR, 20 from Germany, 2 from Italy, 2 from Ireland, 1 from Great Britain, 3 from Poland, 2 from Slovakia. The step-dancing lessons captured the interest of 80 persons on the various levels, 26 dancers joined the set dancing group, 41 people enjoyed the sean-nós dancing class. Music lessons were attended by 45 candidates (19 persons on whistle, 18 people on bodhrán, 6 guitarists, 1 on bagpipes, 1 banjo), the teaching of Irish sean-nós singing and the Irish language equally captured the interest of 8 persons. We all drank 44 barrels of water (1 barrel of about 19 litres). Water consumption for washing was certainly somewhat reduced due to the outage in this area caused by the Prague Heating Company.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out a few details to participants of this summer school - especially those who come for the first time – relating to their presence and organization of the event.

After the deadline date of 15 June we began to optimize the BSS 2010 schedule. Firstly it turned out that two workshops will have to be cancelled. Their rescue was not helped even by the extended deadline which I hoped would increase the number of applications. Just as last year, the flute workshop was cancelled as well as, quite hard for me to understand why, the fiddle workshop. Both seminars were occupied by one candidate. There are about 30 teachers teaching only this instrument in Miltown Malbay. I'm sorry because we have lost a melodic instrument. But what can we do.
 

When we started preparing this jubilee 10th edition of the summer school, we gave a lot of thought to ways how to make it special, how to celebrate this little anniversary. We wanted to come up with something to reward our regular attendants and motivate those who would be there for the first time to visit again. Finally we agreed on inviting special guests to the Final Evening – people who are interesting for our activities in some way.

We would like to inform all prospective applicants of BSS 2010 and visitors of our website about various novelties concerning this year’s Summer School. 

First of all I need to point out to step dancing students registered with CLRG that BSS 2010 will not be declared Open Workshop by CLRG this year. We have been trying to obtain a written form of rules and binding statements from competent CLRG representatives and authorities, because we do not want to complicate anyone’s dancing prospects, but unfortunately our intense efforts did not meet with understanding on the other side and no one from CLRG has sent us those documents yet. This is also illustrated by the correspondence featured in the Czech part of the BSS website. We are very sorry about this situation since it has often been the case, that for many Irish dancers, specifically our Summer School was the gateway to CLRG-registered schools.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the preparation of next year’s edition had started even before BSS 2009 finished. It is not so easy because not everyone of the invitees can keep up with our tempo. Nevertheless, we can already promise some successes.

We have composed a preliminary plan of lessons for 2010 and as usual, we will be able to present some novelty which will become part of the Summer School. So what will it be in 2010?

Nothing keeps good memories from a past event better, beside good feelings, than photos or a video recording. As usual, we are we are producing this audiovisual material from the Summer School which will remind you of it. First there were videotapes, from the 5th Summer School we tried a DVD and that is the case this year as well. At first the videos tried to capture not just the atmosphere of the event but also some steps as a form of reminder for the dancers. Due to growing influence of An Coimisiún rules on the continent the teachers‘ steps became prohibited and thus they are not included anymore.

15 August 2009
The day starts and proceeds as during all seven previous summer schools which were organised in Prague: taking over the school, creating a working area, signposting the way from the nearest bus stop, signposting inside, installing the sound systems etc. That is linked with transporting the teachers from the airport and their accommodation. This takes place with abundant help from the Loužecký couple; I cannot imagine the Summer School without Martin’s graphic design independence. I drive to the airport myself around noon to pick up the teachers from Dublin (Tereza, Ronan McCormack, Gerard Butler) and two Irish ladies, Chris and Jenny, who came to Prague to attend Gerard Butler’s lessons. They are accommodated in Jedličkův Institute and we go back to school. In between, school participants are arriving, registering and settling in.

    Dancing lectors - photo by Milan Hašek
 

We start off with the evening ceilí – with the help from Roman Kozák we mix dances from various areas – American country, Brittany, Scotland, Ireland. Some eight dances were done in two hours. One more journey to the airport in the middle of the night to pick up Michel Sikiotakis and Eileen Quinn whose airplane from Paris had a five-hour delay.