DST - Toronto plans for Spring Fling 2023
October 26, 2022
Co-chair of Spring Fling Toronto Committee, Halyna Sydorenko gives us an update of their plans for 2023.
As a Toronto area teacher and dancer, and as co-chair of our Spring Fling Committee, I am delighted to invite you to my home city for Spring Fling / Spring Fringe 2023 Toronto. Along with my co-chair, Moira Korus, and together with our entire Committee, I am excited that Toronto will host the first ever Spring Fling in North America. We are all looking forward to a high energy weekend, a weekend that we hope will attract not only you, but dancers from around the world, and particularly from North America. Mark your calendars for May 26-28, 2023 and come dance with us to celebrate the centenary of the RSCDS!
The Spring Fling is for dancers aged 12-35 and our goal is to have a minimum of forty Fling dancers attend the event. Running parallel to the Fling, we will have the Spring Fringe for dancers who fall beyond the 12-35 age bracket.
Spring Fling / Spring Fringe will be held in Midtown Toronto at the beautiful Glendon Campus of York University. Remember, Toronto was once called York! Our venue is comprehensive and all dance functions, as well as meals, banquet, and accommodation, will be on campus.
Our teachers – Fiona Mackie (Scotland), Linda Henderson (California, USA) and Toronto’s own Gavin Keachie, a fling-age dancer himself – won’t have you miss a beat. And our musicians – Don Bartlett, Laird Brown, and Donny Wood, all from Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area, and Mara Shea from North Carolina, USA -- are tuning their instruments.
The weekend will comprise a Friday night welcome dance, regular classes Saturday morning, and themed classes in the afternoon. There will be a Saturday night ball for everyone, and a combined class Sunday morning. The cost of the weekend will include accommodation and all meals, from Friday dinner to Sunday breakfast. Once registration opens, early bird rates will be available until February 15, 2023.
With all weekend activities happening on campus, the focus will be on building community, renewing friendships, making new ones, and just having a ball after all the Zooming we did over the two years of the pandemic. But, if you should have your heart set on leaving midtown for downtown, if only for a brief getting-to-know-you, bus options are available, and the ride is not overly long.
Our event website is due to go live mid-November, and registration will start shortly after. The website address is https://www.springfling2023.ca. There is much to check out, including the top sixteen destination points under Toronto Attractions. Start planning your trip now!
And for anyone interested in a bit of history, Glendon began as a suburban country estate with an elegant mansion at its centre. Bequeathed to York University in the 1950s, the campus opened in 1959 as the founding campus of York University. It was officially inaugurated in 1966 by then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. Glendon provides a first-class liberal arts education in both of Canada’s official languages with an increasingly international flair. Allons-y! Let’s bring some international SCD flair to Glendon!
With its motto of “small campus, big heart”, Glendon greets us in four languages: Hello! Bonjour! Hola! Pooshoo! (Ojibwe). With big hearts, we – the Spring Fling Toronto Committee – look forward to greeting you this coming May in Toronto!
