2024 NFO Conference Special Guests
April 4 – 9 in Bruceville, Texas
Jaap Leegwater
Jaap Leegwater will be our special guest at the 2024 Conference in Texas. We expect to offer several dance workshops with him, as well as other presentations. He will be accompanied by Bulgarian master accordionist, Filip Filipov (check him out on YouTube)
Jaap recently made several new research trips to Bulgaria. He is happy to share some of the original Bulgarian dances he learned during these trips with you as well as older material. See here for the long list of all the dances he has introduced during his 40 year career. He is also planning to do a session on Bulgarian Wedding dances, if you should be lucky enough to attend one.
Nina Draganova, a Bulgarian living in Denmark, has this to say about Jaap and Filip:
Jaap is not only a great dancer – but also a good teacher who notices the individual people at the seminar, helping each and every one to learn better and feel great. Not to mention his wonderful personality and sense of humor, that just makes everything great fun!
Filip and Jaap are a great team – it was a pleasure to see how well they understood each other both verbally and non-verbally. Filip has an amazing sense of humor, which together with Jaap’s, is a guarantee for a great time!
Jaap was first introduced to the American folk dance scene by the late Ciga Despotovic in 1980. He gratefully recognizes the support and inspiration received from Marianne and Michael Herman, Dennis Boxell and Yves Moreau in establishing himself in Northern America professionally. Bruce Mitchell also contributed a lot to his work in the US.
Jaap holds an M.S. in Counseling Psychology from California State University Sacramento. After a successful stay of 16 years in the United States he returned to the Netherlands in 1999, and continues his dance teaching career. He has retired from his practice as a consultant in multicultural counseling and education. Go here for more about Jaap.
