Dear editor,

Like so many, I recently attended our wonderful Filberg Festival. But it once again reminded me of a pet peeve of mine that has annoyed me for decades.

Every time I鈥檝e attended a folk music-oriented festival since the 1960s there have been the annoying, uninvited 鈥渄ancers鈥� in front of the performance stage. You know the ones I mean.

I鈥檓 not talking about when an audience jumps up in spontaneous reaction to the energy of the performance and starts dancing. I鈥檓 talking about the annoying and pretentious solo 鈥渄ancers鈥� who, before anyone is even close to being moved to dance for their own enjoyment, jump up in front of the stage and start doing exaggerated and highly stylized dance moves as if they were auditioning to be the choreographer for a Broadway musical featuring modern dance.

Dance prancing back and forth along the stage apron, waving their arms in the air, swooping to and fro and up and down, or doing some other even more visually distracting activity like hula hoop tricks or juggling (I鈥檓 not kidding), these people are using the featured performer鈥檚 time to draw attention to themselves.

My (admittedly passive-aggressive) request to you is this: please stop. No one came to see you. You are being rude, both to the performers and the audience. You are detracting from the real performers by trying to steal the audience鈥檚 attention for yourself. So knock it off.

And if your answer is that you鈥檙e 鈥渏ust following your muse鈥� or are 鈥渕oved by the music,鈥� I challenge you to prove you aren鈥檛 doing it to get attention by doing it somewhere behind the audience where you can prance away to your heart鈥檚 content where no one is watching you and without coming between the real performers and their audience.

Scott Goodman

Courtenay