Summer has arrived with some wonderful warm, dry
weather. Perfect for spending the weekend in Eboracum (York) . We packed up the
tent and awning and headed off over the Pennines. I had not been to this
wonderful fortress before and I was struck by how similar it is to Deva; the
river, the walls, the cathedral, or in York's case the Minster; lots of shops
and of course tea rooms. Although as it was we didn't get much time to explore
as we were kept busy entertaining the crowds in the Yorkshire Museum Gardens.
The museum sits in beautiful grounds just outside the city walls and we were
camping with a number of legions in a corner of the gardens where there had
been a bowling green. We put up our beautiful tent on Friday evening. We had
been positioned with the café just behind us. Has our reputation for being fond
of cake got about, I wonder?
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| Our home from home for the weekend. |
The festival was officially opened by the Mayor
with an inspection of the troops and a rousing speech from the Emperor Hadrian.
We then had a parade into and around the streets of Eboracum. The emperor gave
another stirring speech outside the Minster while standing on a Roman column.
By now we were all getting rather hot so once we got back to the Gardens, we
had time for a quick drink of water before our first performance outside the
museum. It was nice to dance our Tunisian dances and the audience loved our
costumes. It was very easy to encourage them to join in with a scarf dance.
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| Kebi and one of the Romans. |
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| Kebi, Phoenece, Naima and Meroe just after the Tunisian set. |
Back at camp, Meroe set up her henna cushions
and we were happy to chat to a number of locals and visitors to the city about
where we fitted into the Roman period. We encouraged people to visit The Ivory
Bangle lady who is in the museum. It has been shown she was a Berber, so it
makes it easy to explain how people traveled vast distances across the Empire.
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| Meroe with a henna customer. |
Our second dance set was an Egyptian one, and
much as I love our Tunisian costume, it was a relief to change into our cooler
galabeyas.
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| Egyptian set in full swing. |
The next day was even hotter. We had not put up
our awning on the Saturday as there didn't seem to be quite enough room. But
with a bit of lateral thinking and a certain amount of persuasion, we put up
the awning in front of the tent, and boy were we glad of its shade. We noticed
later that it was also popular with our Emperor as well when we were away
dancing.
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| Emperor Hadrian just keeping an eye on our tent.....or cooling off perhaps! |
For me, the festival was also about new experiences and this weekend I came perilously close to learning how to play a cornu. Having been asked to look after it by our own Roman cornu player, I thought I'd give it a go - couldn't get a not out of it!
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| Kebi and the cornu - stick to the dancing Kebi! |
The festival was a huge success. The feedback we
were given by the museum staff and Visit York was excellent. The public were
interested and happy to get involved. We managed to get both cake and ice
cream.
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| It wouldn't be a Ya Raqs event with cake or icecream! |
We were told 15,000 people came through the gates on the Saturday.
Already there is talk of next year being bigger and even better.
