A Melbourne dance group, specifically the dance instructor, has used the social media forum Facebook to communicate his disdain with the organisers of Melbourne’s Antipodes Festival for not allowing his dance group to perform.
The Manasis School of Greek Dance and Culture posted a comment on the Antipodes Festival’s Facebook page on Monday asking for a reply to their submission to perform at this year’s Lonsdale Street Glendi.
But this wasn’t the first time Manasis Dance’s Facebook page had posted public messages on the Festival’s page enquiring why they hadn’t been informed on whether or not they were to be invited to perform at this year’s Glendi. Which begs to ask, why didn’t they try another method of communication such as a telephone or email, to get a more immediate response?
The Festival, in their good grace, continued to reply to Manasis Dance’s messages, the eventual private email sent to them resulted in their decision on Wednesday to post it on their Facebook page in it’s entirety.
One of the claims made by the Festival Director was that Manasis Dance was not invited to participate due to their previous participation where, according to the Festival, they “proved to be recalcitrant and unable to follow the Festival’s rules and beyond this, your subsequent consistent and continuous public slander of our event in social media amongst other forums”.
In the email, the Festival Director suggested they both “sit down and talk about how the group can perform at event” adding if in the meantime they could cease their “baseless and monotonous claims” against the festival.
This public post began a debate with people putting their ‘two cents in’ on what Manasis Dance should do with most suggesting they sit down with the Antipodes Festival and clear the air. During the online conversation, Manasis Dance claimed they had barbecues in their backyard bigger than Antipodes Festival, which prompted the comment to boycott the event all together with Manasis Dance saying they would host a paniyiri on the same weekend as Antipodes Festival.
But the saddest victims in this public and silly squabble are the children of the dance academy who miss out on performing at one of Australia’s largest Greek cultural events.
Here’s hoping that in years to come Manasis Dance does take up the Antipodes Festival on their offer to sit down and talk through these differences for the benefit of the wider Greek community.