Le Mondial des Cultures Drummondville

Le Mondial des Cultures Drummondville

31^st edition

July 5-15, 2012

An international folklore festival Le Mondial des Cultures Drummondville is presently held at the Woodyatt Park, located at the heart of Drummondville, a town in the Centre-du-Québec region. It was formerly called the Festival Mondial de Folklore (World Folklore Festival). It is basically a folk dance festival. During the eleven days of celebrations, dozens of renowned artists and folk ensembles from around the world participate in this event. In recent years, it has attracted on average over 300,000 visitors per year.

On a late afternoon, when I had my chance to travel from Montreal to visit the site, I was able to watch 3 folkloric groups to perform to considerable audiences.

The first one was from Martinique, the photo above. Their cheerful Caribbean music and rhythm quite enchanted the audience as they watched intently the dancers' every move.

Nearby, at the Espace Jeunesse stage, I found a Polish folkloric group. They consisted entirely of adolescents ranging in age from 12 to 17 years old. Yet despite being so young, they put on a great show. Their performance was charming and well appreciated. Their costumes were very colourful, making the girls look radiant.

After they finished the formal part of their performance, they initiated audience participation, inviting all the children present. There was a considerable number of children since the Espace Jeunesse stage is located in the children's playground area. 

The performers have left the formal stage setting and were teaching children a Polish dance right on the grass of the playground area. It was quite obvious that the children appreciated very much this possibility to get involved in a culture they did not know before and to dance to music so different from what they usually hear in Quebec.

The next group I had a chance to see at yet another stage at the festival, was from Cyprus, more specifically, from the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Their costumes and music had a distinct oriental flavour. The dance performed on the left seemed to portray either prenuptial or wedding traditions. The girl in red is introduced to a young man in a red vest who opens the red veil and gives the girl a gift.

 
Next was an all male dance by the same Cyprus folkloric group. It was about the skill of balancing glass goblets filled to the brim with water on men's heads. After the formal dance part was performed, the men stood in line one behind the other, with legs wide apart. One of them, having placed several goblets filled with water on his head, began to crawl on his belly between the dancer's legs. The objective was not to spill the water and not to drop any glass goblets the performer was balancing on his head. The audience was thrilled when this was successfully accomplished. 

The Northern Cyprus folkloric group had no problems of getting members of the audience to participate on the stage with them after their final impressive performance act.

The following pictures show the general ambience of the festival grounds.

An ally with boutiques and folkloric items.

Children's playground area.

Russian Matrioshka dolls..

First nations compound.

The Mondial des Cultures is a festival for those who are eager to discover many diverse cultures of the world in line with the official festival's mission to "Develop and hold an international cultural event which displays the facets of various traditions of the world in a festival for the whole family where a brotherhood and universal spirit of peace prevails."