CIRCLE DANCE HOLIDAY AT ANILIO, PILION, GREECE

FRIDAY 4 - FRIDAY 11 SEPTEMBER, 2009

Led by Paul Boizot

Some photos from the 2009 event can be found online at Flickr.com.

 

 

Print version and A4 flier

A week to both relax and dance, sharing circle dance together in a beautiful, peaceful environment, but with plenty of time to enjoy the nearby beaches, and wooded mountain walks.

Some dance experience is needed - Circle Dance or World Dance; or International Folk Dance if you are happy to fit in with the different approach taken in Circle Dance. I teach both IFD and Circle Dance, but please note this is not an IFD holiday.

This event ran for the first time in Sept. 2007 - my brief written review is at the end of this page.

 

Venue  

This holiday will  again be held at the Pilion Centre in Anilio, but under the auspices of Kalikalos,  who have taken over the lease there. Some people from Kalikalos were associated with the Pilion Centre a few years back. They will run my holiday down at Anilio, rather than at Kalikalos itself, so that we can use the dance space there. The dance space is in a lovely setting, looking out on to woodland. Pilion Centre is where I ran the event in 2007.....

Beach nearby, walks, woods.....The centre is run on a non-profit basis, and has an ethos which values building community - as part of this, dancers are expected to contribute 4 to 5 hours help during the week with activities such as washing up, food preparation, cleaning, watering the garden and so on. This also keeps the cost down. Expect to be on afternoon cooking rota for the evening meal at least once during the week - probably no more than once if the venue is fairly full. We are all expected to participate in a cleanup on the final morning - please bear this in mind regarding your flight times! See the Centre's facilities page for more on all this.

Accommodation 

 

Kalikalos's main building is a small hotel or large guest house (Xenonas, in Greek) located at the edge of the village of Kissos in the Pilion Mountains of Greece. However, we will be staying and dancing down in Anilio, at the Pilion Centre.

The basic price is for a shared room at the Pilion Centre. 

• 17 beds in six bedrooms, all with shared toilets and showers 

• Possibility of extra rooms (tbc) in a guest house about 10 min. walk from the Centre in Anilio village. Possibility of single occupancy.

• Possibility of tent accommodation, though September may get some rainy weather - discuss with the Centre!

 

Meals All meals are provided and included in the price. We are all expected to provide some help, including with the cooking of at least one evening meal - see Venue above. As the cooking is generally done by the community - staff, participants, and guests - they usually stick to basic tasty, vegetarian meals using mainly local produce. You can see some typical menus on the Kalikalos website.

A buffet breakfast and a main meal (usually dinner) is provided. Lunch is a snack meal, generally a beach picnic box consisting of bread, butter/marge, olives, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers and fruit. Once a week the staff have a day off from coordinating a main meal, so most people eat out that evening at one of the local tavernas, where a basic meal with a glass of wine runs to about £9.00 (€11.00). NB The taverna meal is not included in the basic price of the holiday.

 

Prices & booking details Charge for the week, including everything except your travel (i.e. flights and associated transfers to and from Pilion) and a taverna meal out, is £325/€450 Euros for shared accommodation.

The basic price provides accommodation in a double/twin or triple or quad room. There is a double/twin room guarantee supplement of £50/€75. There is a low-season single room supplement of £100/€150.  These are payable in advance along with your deposit of £100/€150. There may be a reduction of £20/€30 for tent occupancy providing that you bring your own tent, sleeping bag, foam mattress, towel and (if desired) pillow - tent space is not guaranteed, so check with Kalikalos.

You can either pay your deposit plus any room supplements, or pay the full amountin advance. Bookings can be made in several ways - please enquire for more details. 
1. via the Centre's booking page on their website, using a credit card or Paypal. NB although UK/European dancers will be charged in GBP or Euros, the operating price of the payment processor is US dollars. You will therefore be charged the current GBP or Euros equivalent of the $175 dollar deposit, and any discrepancy will be made up when you arrive at the Centre. As an example, on 14 January 2009 the deposit worked out at £126.89. Even if you intend to pay by another method, the website shows you the various things to include in the price - room supplements, discounts for overland travel, etc.
2. by sterling cheque to me  - Paul Boizot, 39 Hamilton Drive East, York YO24 4DW, UK.
3. by cheque (payable to the Holly Foundation) to Johanna Aro Louis, 19 Blarmore Avenue, Inverness IV3 8QT, Scotland.
4. by direct transfer to a Kalikalos bank account.

For prices for children and for guests not attending workshops please see the Kalikalos Families and Guests page. 

Reduced rates apply for Greeks, and residents of other countries where the standard of living is considerably lower than in the developed countries of N. Europe and N. America. There is a 10% discount given for booking two consecutive workshop weeks and there is a 5% discount for traveling overland and reducing our carbon footprint. A limited number of partial bursaries and work-exchanges are available for those whose financial resources are limited.

You can also spend an extra week at the Centre without participating in a workshop, subject to space being available. The rate for full board in 2008 was £175/€250 per week (£25/€40 per day). 

 

Getting there Anilio is roughly 27 miles (40km) east of Volos, Greece's 6th largest city. Volos itself is 4 hours by bus from Athens, 2.5 hours from Thessaloniki and 80 minutes by “Flying Dolphin” hydrofoil from the island of Skiathos. 

There are many different ways to travel to the Centre. There are regular flights to the nearby island of Skiathos from many UK airports, flights to Thessaloniki and Athens, some last-minute direct flights to Volos, and the friendly local taxi service - or possibly minibus share - to bring you from Volos. For people with time to spare, there are improved road and rail connections. See the Kalikalos travel page for full details, map, etc.

Do note though that you will be unlikely to just get a standard budget airline flight from the UK for £50 each way! Some budget airlines do go to Athens now, but only from the south of England, and it is a longer trip than Spain or France. Look at the Kalikalos travel page for a full range of options - they say, for example, that flights to Skiathos/Volos depart from London Gatwick, Manchester and Newcastle. The published fares range from £169 to £289 for one or two week charters....Typical return fares to Athens/Thessaloniki on Easy Jet from London run as low as £140 if booked well in advance.

I flew to Thessaloniki in 2007 for around £200 return, having waited to book the flight till a few weeks before the event, then got the KTEL bus to Volos. The majority of our party booked earlier and flew in to nearby Skiathos, paying around £280 return. I think the Centre's charges are low enough to make this still a reasonably priced event.

 

Dates & Times Friday 4 - Friday 11 September 2009. Fridays are arrival and departure days. Dance sessions run from the Saturday to the Thursday. We will be expected to spend some time clearing up on the final Friday morning, so please take this into account regarding your travel times.

 

Programme  I want to strike a balance between time spent dancing and time spent relaxing and enjoying the centre, its surroundings, and each other's company. 

The basic plan is to dance in the mornings when it is cooler - though the Centre is quite temperate for Greece, and September is past the hottest weather. Afternoons will mainly be mostly for relaxing, walking, visiting the beach. Then we will usually dance again in the early evening before supper. (NB each dancer will be on cooking rota for one evening meal, which for most dancers will mean missing one evening session).

There can be other options, apart from dancing, if any participants want them - in 2007 we had a singing session where each of us brought a song along, and I will certainly come equipped with lyrics for some simpler Circle/Folk dance songs.

 

About me  I live in York, UK,  and have taught dance since 1992. I have been told I am very clear in my teaching, and I like to teach with some humour. My choreographies include Ever-Flowing Spring, Wise Maid, Twilight, Hoireann O, Klezmer Waltz, Truvisqueira, Turning Point and Butterfly Jig. I particularly like Balkan (including Rom/Gypsy), Romanian and Greek traditional dances as well as some modern and meditational ones. I am interested in how the whole body is used in dance - using dance to improve posture, and vice-versa. I also sing, drum and play bouzouki. For more info, see DANCE & MUSIC.

Further details

Paul Boizot, 39 Hamilton Drive East, York YO24 4DW
01904 621510 info@paulboizot.co.uk

 

Print version  - the text of this webpage, excluding the review below, with basic formatting only. Opens in your word processing programme, and includes the hyperlinks.

Download flier  - an abbreviated version of the content of this page, prints as one A4 page.

 

Review of 2007 event at the Pilion Centre (NB 2009 event is at a different venue a few miles away, but with the same basic ethos). 

This event ran for the first time in Sept. 2007 and was generally well received by those who came and danced. It was great to dance in the longhouse with the blinds raised up on two sides so that we were looking straight out onto woodland. Occasionally we would see the silhouette of a lizard on the canvas roof. The Pilion Centre is in a really beautiful setting, and the whole area around it is much more green and fertile than many other parts of Greece.

Food was great - all veggie and freshly prepared. The accommodation was basic but generally OK - note that the Pilion Centre bills itself as "the affordable alternative". Some of the rooms might have been a bit crowded if full to capacity, but we were a smallish group.

One of our party volunteered to drive a minibus, so we all chipped in and hired one for trips to beaches, tavernas, etc., though some people still walked to the beach sometimes - around 40 minutes downhill, a little longer coming back....

I had been concerned about how much time we would have to dance - would we fit enough in? In fact the balance seemed to work well - dancing from around 10 a.m. till lunchtime, then a short time preparing veg, eating, clearing up, and then the afternoon free for walks, beach, or just lazing around on-site with a book. Dancing again from around 5.30 till 8.00 p.m., then on most evenings supper and chatting - or singing, or a bit of music-making - till bedtime. We went out for taverna meals on a couple of nights, and had one late-night dance session. The weather was cool enough in the evenings that some of us needed an extra layer or two by the end of the dancing - I was glad to have it that way as I had been concerned that it might be too hot. The days were generally warm enough though!

I am looking forward to enjoying the event even more in 2009 as I had a tooth abscess last time, which developed within a day of landing in Greece! My first experience of the Greek health service was all positive, though - James at the Pilion Centre contacted the Health Centre at Zagora, Jane drove me there in the minibus, and an English-speaking doctor prescribed me antibiotics.

Here's to an even better event at Kalikalos in 2009!

 

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Page last updated 18.08.17

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contact me on: 01904 621510

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