The normally genteel world of Bavarian folk dancing was on Monday at the centre of a bitter row over its limited role in the opening ceremony for the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany.
Members of Bavaria’s folk-dancing association are incensed that they have been allocated just 45 seconds to perform during next year’s World Cup opening ceremony on June 9 in Munich. Millions of television viewers from across the globe are expected to watch the opening celebrations before the first match of the tournament between Germany and a team to be drawn next month.
The folk dancers are also furious after organisers banned women from performing — leaving the men, who wear lederhosen and Bavarian hats decorated with the beard of a mountain goat, to slap their thighs alone.
”We are not going to be taken for a ride,” Bernd Walter, the deputy president of the Bavarian folk-dancing association, said on Monday. ”If they don’t give us any longer, we simply won’t take part. Bavarian folk dancing is a complicated and precise discipline. It would be nice if we could show the world what we can do.”
Other Bavarian pastimes — including Alpine horn blowing, musical whip cracking, and ceremonial gun firing — have also been dumped in the same 45-second slot, the folk dancers complain.
”Bavarian folk dancing is still very popular,” said Otto Dufter, the association’s president. ”There have been organised clubs since 1850. We now have 1 000 of them across Bavaria.”
Christopher Stückl, the artistic director of Munich’s Volkstheater, is choreographing the 20-minute ceremony. He was unavailable for comment on Monday.
Organisers have argued that since the World Cup is an all-German event, it is unreasonable for the folk dancers to demand a starring role. That has gone down badly in Bavaria — with 70% insisting in a recent poll for Bavarian state radio that the Munich celebrations should have an overtly Bavarian theme.
On Monday, a spokesperson for the World Cup organising committee said it was too early to say what would be in the opening ceremony, to be held at Munich’s Allianz Stadium. Further discussions would take place in a summit between the organisers and the folk dancers in early December, officials said. — Guardian Unlimited Â