the 152-page festival guide for 2026<\/a> pays tribute to her and also Eric Iggleden, president of the dance fest society from 2007 to 2019.<\/p>\nThis year dancers will get a chance to shine at the arts centre until April 22, in multiple dance divisions including jazz, hip-hop and street, international, modern\/contemporary, ballet and tap\/stage.<\/p>\n
Backstage, Carol Girardi is again busy organizing things, as she\u2019s done for close to 40 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoreen (Rowe), she twisted my arm to come aboard,\u201d Girardi recalled with a smile. \u201cThey were doing everything by hand and I set them up on computers and got that sorted.\u201d<\/p>\n
While festival numbers have fluctuated over the years, kids and adults from around the region keep coming back to perform for trophies, scholarships and the fun of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not so much about scholarships it\u2019s about giving kids the opportunity to dance on this big stage for a crowd of people,\u201d Girardi insisted. \u201cPerforming means a lot to these kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, the sweetest thing happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a girl doing a solo tap, she was about 10 or 11,\u201d Girardi started. \u201cShe came off the stage, finished, and she was literally crying her heart out. The kids backstage, they were all there hugging her saying, \u2018What\u2019s the matter? What\u2019s the matter?\u2019 She was, \u2018Oh, I missed a step! I missed a step!\u2019 They said, \u2018You did? Well, if you did, you did an amazing job!\u2019 When she left backstage, she was happy. Seeing that camaraderie with the kids who are there for each other, it\u2019s special.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fest has always been held in April, meaning a busy few weeks for Patty Halliday, a volunteer for 32 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first year, I was mega-pregnant with twins and wasn\u2019t allowed to work,\u201d Halliday recalled. \u201cSo Carol (Girardi) said, \u2018Well, come do some typing,\u2019 and I\u2019ve been here ever since. My parents both volunteered here too, and my daughters (twins Emily and Haley) come help me \u2014 not today, they\u2019re at work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Halliday sorts two tables filled with festival trophies, some of them four or five decades old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are around 500 trophies \u2014 I want to say 532, but I could be wrong,\u201d she said. \u201cI keep track of every single one. The first trophies were in 1967, the first year they gave them out, in April that year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wong, back in Surrey for just a couple of days, had time to look at all those trophies while waiting to go for lunch with his mother, busy organizing jazz dancers backstage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese trophies have the names of past winners, their names engraved on them,\u201d marvelled Wong, who works in film and TV now. \u201cI see my name on quite a few of these trophies and a lot of my friends that, you know, were also past winners. I took pictures and texted them. It\u2019s really cool to see this history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Admission at the festival is $6 a day. Visit surreyfestival.com<\/a> for the daily schedule and more details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Wong now lives in New York and L.A., but Surrey and its annual Festival of Dance still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-595380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}