31 OCTOBER 1952, Page 13

FOLK DANCING

International Dance Festival. (Albert Hall.) OF the 450 performers, only the French, Belgian and Brazilian dancers came to England specially for the occasion. The rest of the dances of twenty-four lands were presented by members of the Society for International Folk Dancing, and students, exiles, and members of Embassy staffs living here. The evening was not as lively as one had expected it to be. But if the general tenor was one of dull- ness, the evening's outstanding items sang out all the more happily. The Vava Vadmal of Sweden was perhaps the most interesting from the point of view of pattern, but the two highlights were un- doubtedly the wonderfully skilful Candle Dance of Indonesia and the Hopak from the Ukraine, performed by Ukrainian textile-