NGI Recipient: Lauren Curtis
Session Attended: Folk Arts Center of New England - Folk Days (2015)
For years now, I have heard about how wonderful Pinewoods was. I was always interested, but it always seemed to be exclusive, like a club you could join only if you knew a guy. I knew very few people in the folk dance community and at that time, I didn’t even know what folk dance was. Because of that, Pinewoods seemed unapproachable. In reality, though, it is the opposite of that. Everyone is extremely welcoming and kind. At first, I was nervous about intruding into an already established paradigm that I had never been a part of before, but when I got there it seemed as if I had been there many times before.
I had only started folk dancing this past fall, when I joined Mladost Folk Ensemble. Since then, I have gotten a crash course in folk dancing and the community that surrounds it. Folk dancing is something I enjoy very much, which is why this NGI scholarship was such a good opportunity, and it also gave me the chance to try something that I never would have even thought of before, and to make new friends and to experience even more wonderful dancing than I would have been able to otherwise.