From the AIFD Board President: We continue to hope and pray that all our AIFD dancers and friends are staying safe and healthy during the stressful time! We urge everyone to follow the stay-at-home and social-distancing guidance as much as is possible, because (as I said last week) the sooner the virus is stopped, the sooner we can get back to DANCING!! Meanwhile, there are on-line activities for folk dancing and folk music – in your living room! We will keep you updated on the AIFD dance schedule, and post links of interest.

For more information, including important links,check out this week’s AIFD newsletter.

From the AIFD Board President: We sincerely hope and pray that all our AIFD dancers are faring well during this time of the COVID-19 virus. Travis County has instituted a shelter-in-place order that started Tuesday, March 24, a serious measure that is aimed at stopping transmission of the virus in order to “flatten the curve.” We urge everyone to follow this guidance as much as is possible, because the sooner the virus is stopped, the sooner we can get back to DANCING. We will not do this until we are 100% sure it is safe to do so. I miss folk dancing and my dancing friends, and I look forward to seeing you all on the dance floor as soon as possible. We will keep you updated on any information on resuming folk dancing. Please take care and stay safe! – Denise Fynmore.

For more information, including links to upcoming events, AIFD Newsletter.

From the AIFD Board: For the foreseeable future, AIFD (as well as Contra and ECD) will not be meeting. This is for 2 reasons: First – common sense. Second – HRC is also closed for the foreseeable future. During this time the newsletter will still be distributed every Wednesday. The newsletter will include updates from the board and other relevant information. This will also be a great opportunity to publish any content you would like to share. So if you have poems, stories, recipes, pictures, please email them to the AIFD newsletter_editor. If this link doesn’t work, try this one instead. If you have a video file to share, let us know and we can help you load it onto the AIFD Youtube page. We can also help load pictures to the AIFD photo album. We can then include corresponding links in the newsletter.

For complete details and other other important stuff, check out this week’s AIFD Newsletter.

This Friday at dancing: Sharon DJs, Janie assists. March Birthdays and Anniversaries.

Enjoy a lively evening of dancing DJ’d by Sharon Casteel. Sharon will be assisted by Janie Hopkins. Do you or a fellow dancer have a birthday or anniversary in March? Come to folk dancing to celebrate with song, dance, and cake!

Contra: Our Contra this week will be called by Nana Lopez.

Friday, March 6 7-9:45 pm.
Admission fee is $5 for those 18 and older.
There is no fee for those under 18,
but they must be supervised by a designated person 18 or older.
Hancock Recreation Center (HRC)

During these difficult times, AIFD is maintaining a list of fund raising efforts for people in our folk dance community affected by the Coronavirus.

The list includes fund raising efforts for specific needs (such as Petur Iliev’s house burning down) to more general efforts (such as donations to food banks).

If you know of a fund raising effort that you would like AIFD to add to this list, please forward the link to Quarantine_help@aifd.cc.

This list will be available through the AIFD weekly newsletter, aifd.cc, and via our FB pages.

Do you have live music or other activities you would like to share with the AIFD community during quarantine? We can help get the word out.

Email us at quarantine_event_coordinator@aifd.cc with details about what, when, and how (medium). and we can list it in the AIFD newsletter, on aifd.cc, and on Facebook.

If your event is stepping on other events in such a way that can impact attendance, we can help coordinate scheduling.

Unfortunately, at this point, we cannot assist with technicalities, such as providing a Zoom account, but there are plenty of resources out there to help you with this.

The Austin International Folk Dancers maintains 2 pages on Facebook: An AIFD Facebook page and an AIFD Facebook Group page.

What’s the difference?

– The AIFD Facebook page is visible to the world but can only be updated by owners and editors.

– The AIFD Facebook Group page is private. Any member can post content. That content will be available to anyone in the group. Admins approve requests to join .. mainly to keep out scammers and spammers.

Would you like to contribute content to the AIFD newsletter while we are not meeting during the Coronavirus outbreak?

Feel free to send pictures, links, or text to newsletter_editor@aifd.cc.

Also, we would like to credit whoever provides content, so please also send your name and a picture (or a link to a picture) that can be cropped accordingly.