Crisis of confidence

[mrsbrown]

I seem to be responsible for finding a hall, booking it and doing the publicity for the Midwinter Ball

We currently have Brunswick Town Hall tentatively booked, but they won't let us have candles, it costs about $900 and it's enormous.

Should we be organising smaller venues, put caps an attendances and have really good small events rather than fuck off big ones?

For instance, could we use Sophia Mundi? Where there is an adequate kitchen, a space where we can have fires and people outside and a nice enough small hall. Also, a second dance space for classes during the day.

Photos from the midwinter event we held are here - http://abbotsford.sca.org.au/gallery/Winterfeast-2005

hmmm

Comments

[teffania.livejournal.com]

In my hall hunting experience*, there are a lot of halls that are unsuitable for feasts because their kitchen only easily cooks (3 courses) for 40, but the hall seats 120. Some are moderately expensive (less than ones with full industrial kitchens), others quite affordable. Scout and Guide halls tend to have poor kitchens, but hall size varies from small to fairly large.

With a ball with a post dinner buffet, you don't need to have an oven that can fit 10 chickens and 10 pies in all at once. You can keep the food rolling for hours (although you'll get rushes at the end of dance sets) and serve a lot more cold food too. With a feast, a too large hall can destroy the intimate nature of a community feast (think newcomers, college or canton feast, rather than coronation or investiture). With a ball it's the ability to dance without worrying about tripping over each other. Then again we held a ball d'argent in a medium sized hall without many space problems, and I can't imagine you'll have many more people along to a random ball than we did to an event that drew substantial numbers of interstate visitors. I think the hall we used (oakleigh mechanics) was about the same size as the winterfeast hall, although classes during the day were elsewhere (you may be able to wangle something cheap at the uni for portions of the day that don't involve food, although it's only going to be worth it if the travel difficulties outweight the reduced cost and added rooms.)

At the ball d'argent we had a gambling den set aside for non-dancing partners (we put it on the stage - the slope wasn't too difficult to overcome), but I didn't manage to get publicity of that to the non-dancers sucessfully. Maybe if you had someone well known in non-dancing circles (eg fighting, drinking) hosting and publicising it? Then again, you seemed to have more non-dancers to the last stormhold ball, so this might not be such a problem. An afternoon rapier tournament would be annother way to draw in more people, or you could just unashamedly be a dance only event.

If you are looking at classes during the day, and a grand ball (rather than a country ball), better changing room facilities are a bonus (not necessary, but nice) - you might be able to pop home, but surely you're hoping for dancers like me who are too far away for that? And grand ball clothing tends to be bulkier and slower to change into. Mind you, I'd be happy with a girls only room with drawn curtains - it doesn't have to be a formal changing room.

*Mind you, my hall hunting has all been in the middle to outer suburbs. I've noticed how different eras built quite different kinds of halls, so the halls in the areas you are looking in are probably quite different from what I've seen.