In Sweden there is a soap bubble, Herrang Dance Camp

For: The. Berdejo and T. Pinco (text and photos)
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In northern Sweden, in Stockholm County limits, in the extreme northeast of the municipality of Norrtälje (pronounced "Nortalia") there is a town with 422 registered inhabitants called Herräng. Herräng has a port, a beach, houses with flowers, a school, blond children, swings and the smell of cinnamon cake. Herräng is extremely cold in winter, nordic heat in summer, days that last 16 hours in July and days that last four hours at Christmas. So far it is nothing more than a standard northern Swedish village with its meadows, its fat birds and its heating. Yet this remote place is something else. For three decades, five weeks a year becomes Herräng Dance Camp (HDC), the world's largest Lindy Hop dance festival.

Dancers from all over the planet land in this hidden place

Dancers from all over the planet land in this hidden place whose atmosphere, spatial distribution and energy mutate until the recreation of an unreal bubble (the real?) of music, dance, fatigue, brownies and emotions taken to extremes. The empire of sensations begins to filter through the intricacies of the town a week before the festival begins, At the end of june, when the first workers arrive to "prepare the Camp", and keeps floating until a week later, already entered august, when the dancers leave and everything remains to be collected.

"Prepare the Camp" basically consists of emptying the school, library, restaurant, Herräng kindergarten and cultural center, and transform them into dance floors, meeting rooms, a who, an ice cream shop, two hostels, a kitchen and two cafeterias. In addition, an entire army of tents and caravans are installed that house classes, offices, a mexican cantina, a vintage store, a workshop and a bicycle rental business. With the new structure standing, full of colors and textures of the happy twenties, thirty forty, The first week of July opens the gate to another dimension and the festival begins.

On the other side of the green door

In the HDC dimension there are dance classes, music bands, shows, Lindy championships, the boogie woogie, slammed, ice creams, squirt gun wars, bicycles with which to go to the Marina to see the boats rocking and a piano that someone plays when the sun rises at three in the morning at the bar. In Herräng there are, to give an example, toys, a carefree energy, a “dream factory” and one of the best coffees in Sweden (100% Arabica Gourmet Coffee).

A piano that someone plays when the sun rises at three in the morning at the bar

I've been coming to this Festival for four years and it still scares me, until the inevitable attraction, the metamorphosis that my spirit undergoes in these conditions. When one arrives, and this I perceived very well the second year that I was working in the cafe, brings with it the concerns of the west, your old fears, the complexes, pre-vacation stress, the desire to assert yourself, various ego modes and a largely forgotten childhood, withered, convalescing and asleep to essential boredom.

As the days go by - sometimes the first 24 hours is enough - childhood begins to stir in its cot as if it were beginning to emerge from a very long lethargy and gradually remember what it was to be alive and how fun it had been to Play. The dancers who ask for a coffee on the first day and wait impatiently for it to be brought to them in the rush of the cultural pattern that they bring attached like a viscous and green mass, the second day they arrive more relaxed, they look at the air while they wait, and the third day they don't give a damn that there is no lactose-free milk, no gluten-free banana bread and sometimes until no coffee. Have passed to the other side, they have put the fart character of the culture of the rush in which they live to sleep on the bunk and they have taken to run around, to dance and ride a bike to the wise child that we all carry in our hearts.

Dancing until dawn

In Herräng, classes start at 10 a.m. and end at 7 p.m.. Each level has about three classes a day, so that the dancers have space and time for the beach, walks, nordic mozzarella sandwiches, choreography rehearsals or naps on the lawn. At 9pm in one of the main rooms a meeting with shows takes place, videos and news, quite funny and witty, and at 10pm the music starts.

Every night there is at least one live band, and anyone who wants can get sick of dancing and dancing and dancing. And between dancing and dancing you go to the bar and have a beer, or some nachos, or a tea, and suddenly oh! it is Sunrising, it's three in the morning, and the band is done. But suddenly a guy starts playing the piano at the entrance and someone comes with a sax and gets mixed up and people start dancing, and the music goes on, and in the Dansbanan a teacher is playing a soft tempo and this does not end. As long as there is a dancer somewhere there is music playing, whether it's seven in the morning or breakfast time.

As long as there is a dancer somewhere there is music playing

Now is 15:09 on a Saturday and as I write this I hear a band play live and if I look out the window I see some carrying the piano, some people arriving with suitcases, The Italian who makes the videos filming the gang on a ladder, the Chorus Line girls in the smoking area in a boat and one of the organizers surrounded by a cloud of about thirty balloons from yesterday's costume party. All of this is absolutely real.

Morning epiphanies

A couple of days ago when I left home I saw that at the foot of the bike there was a snail and a slug that were walking amicably at that early hour. I stayed a while watching them in their slowness, in my slowness, in a rare combination of slowness with the frenetic dance, of carpediem with that sun so high in the north that it casts a bluish light from well beyond the horizon.

I felt the magic of this soap bubble of music and nature, the experimentation of each moment, of every minute of life. I understood, in a great epiphanic swerve, that life is about that, to be alive at every moment, the, like children and snails, go slowly without running anywhere following the tempo set by the music, without anticipating or waiting, without being unmarked or highlighted, get into the flow, simply, and then fly away.

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Comments (9)

  • Nacho

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    Very well done the photos, Yes sir, and very well edited.

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  • Ann

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    Laura, Whenever I read you I feel the things I felt when I was a child and I threw myself into children's adventure books… You're great.
    Thanks

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  • javier Brandoli

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    This is not a story only, it's a wonderful life lesson told brilliantly and slowly. VaP could not start its new season better. Thank you Berdejo!

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  • Rosa Estévez

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    Precious. Wherever you are Laura Berdejo it will be a pleasure to make soap bubbles with you.

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  • Mayte

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    Cute, what dose of energy has read it!!

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  • Jaime

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    Laura, thank you for bringing us a wonderful new story. Once more, have you got teleportation, but this time not only in space but also in time.

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  • Silvia

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    Laura, I loved!!! You made me relive many Herráng moments, and you don't know why (although actually yes, what you don't know is to explain it to people when you come back) hooks up!

    And Tamara great photos!!

    Very good tandem!
    Congratulations girls

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  • Jesus

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    Laura desde quee te conozco se que tu tienes esa magia para contar las cosas de la vida es un verdadero placer poder disfrutarlo «sigue

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  • Elisa

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    Laura! I enjoyed the article, full of light and color, like you! Things like going! Fat kisses.

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