ITALIAN FOLK DANCERS

    Victor Peck and Victor Gugliuzza

    of Kansas City, Missouri, USA




    Mailing Address:

    Italian Folk Dancers
    c/o Victor Peck and Victor Gugliuzza
    5704 Charlotte
    Kansas City, MO 64110-2762 USA



    Send email correspondence to Victor Peck and Victor Gugliuzza.

    A Brief History of Kansas City's Italian Folk Dancers

    Greater Kansas City, Missouri, has 59 ethnic groups. Each one has its own festival every year. The Italian Festival has been fairly small, consisting of carnival rides and games for the children, food booths, and a stage with about two hours of entertainment, mainly groups singing songs in English made famous by Italian-American singers.

    In the 1980s, the Mayor of Kansas City developed the Ethnic Commission to better inform the public about the cultural variety of their city. He established the third weekend in August as the date every year for all the ethnic groups to come together to participate in one big Ethnic Festival for Greater Kansas City. Attendance at the festival is between 70,000 and 100,000, depending on weather. People come from all over the United States as well as from other countries.

    The Ethnic Festival provides the opportunity for each ethnic group to organize booths selling food or souvenirs representative of their nationality. In a recent Festival, 33 different nationalities had food booths. The Italian booth typically sells pizza, Italian chicken, Italian ice, and lemonade.

    The three-day festival provides entertainment Friday evening, and all day Saturday and Sunday, with a different performance group on the stage every half hour. Nationality groups which are too small to have a food booth or a performance group have members who dress up in their countries' costumes and walk around answering questions and passing out information about their country.

    The local chapter of UNICO has been instrumental in trying to unify the various Italian groups to participate as a cooperative organization. Together with UNICO, Victor Peck and Victor Gugliuzza are rebuilding an Italian dance group that will eventually be able to present Italian folk dances at a future festival. At one time, their group had seven Italian dancers, aged 57 to 80, providing performances around the city. Their costumes represented different Italian provinces. Unfortunately, due to physical limitations, they had to disband. But with the growth of UNICO, Peck and Gugliuzza hope to teach the dances they know to members of UNICO so that they can form a dance group with younger dancers who will carry on the traditions. They also hope that UNICO will take over the organization of the currently small Italian Festival and build it into one of the city's biggest festivals.



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    Italian Folk Art Federation of America, Inc.

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