Home

DIGIMOOT

The digital version of Scandimoot 2021 took place over the weekend of 1st to 3rd May.

DIGIMOOT ran over three days with a mix of live workshops and pre-recorded performances, featuring artists both familiar and new. The digital format gave us the opportunity to include artists, workshops and performances in our programme that we wouldn't normally have had the resources for.

Some comments ....

it was all brilliant, and such a treat for those of us who can’t get to the Yorkshire event.

Thank you so much for putting on such a wonderful weekend!

I can’t think of any way you could have made it better.

Your answer to Scandimoot cancellation has been brilliant.

I wanted to say thanks so much for everything with Digimoot - it was fabulous, so well run and so welcoming! The workshops were fantastic. Thanks so much!

It really felt like an "event" even though we were all sat in our spare rooms.

Utterly brilliant!
Wow, Digimoot has offered so much.

Congratulations on this superb achievement.

A triumph! I don't know how, but you managed brilliantly to re-create something of the buzz of the live event! Roll on next year ...

Thank you so much for thinking about how to create a real festival feeling! I think you made it! So many fantastic ideas! I never thought that would be possible "just" online!

The concert films were just glorious. Excellent sound and video quality ...

--------------------------------

Scandimoot & Digimoot

In 2014 Rowan Rheingans said, of learning traditional Scandinavian music,

‘You can do things informally; there’s lots of gatherings around, but not with tutors like these - not that I’ve come across. It’s a rare thing, to be able to spend a dedicated weekend working with someone who’s really an expert’

It would have been so much easier not to have run a Scandi event in some form this year. But if we’d taken the easy option back in 2007, Scandimoot would never have come into existence - a huge loss. So we decided to create a digital version of our weekend gathering; the result is ‘Digimoot’.

We are proud of our unbroken tradition of music and dance from Scandinavia in Yorkshire in May, which began in the late 1980s with Yorkshire Dales Workshops (thank you Geoff and Liz Bowen, and Fliss Patterson). YDW bloomed in the 90s, running day events and then annual residential weekends in music and dance from Scandinavia, and in those days was probably unique in the UK in hosting an event like that. Scandimoot took over the reins in 2007, when the funding for YDW ran out, and the May gatherings continued. And now the bloom has spread; there are hundreds of sessions, social media sites, and small and large groups of musicians and dancers in the UK who get together (when they can) to play and dance Scandi style, many of them influenced by their experiences at Scandimoot. Covid stopped us from meeting last year, but once is enough without some sort of event.

The list of artists over the last 30 years who have performed and taught is seriously impressive, far too long to print here. In 2012 as a typical example, Ellika Frisell, Bridget Marsden, Maja Gravermoen Toresen and Jon Holmén were musician/tutors and Jon Holmén played Boda polska for dance workshops taught by Petter Johansson and Katinka Kundler.

Many other guest artists are also now lauded and famous, but we only had to mention Digimoot and they offered their support, going to unsolicited lengths, finding time in busy schedules, and finding or generating high quality resources, sometimes at their own expense, just to help us.

‘Digimoot 2021’ will, we hope, be only an interruption in the live schedule of ‘mootings’ from Scandinavia. It certainly won’t be the least. We have been able to create a really amazing programme which cuts across boundaries and borders for a true meeting of Scandinavian music and dance, digitally.

Welcome to Digimoot. As always:

'Bringing the best of Scandinavian music and dance to the UK'