Written by door Hans Koomen
Now that the association has been around for 80 years, in addition to rehearsals and parties, members have performed many demonstrations at home and abroad. It is time to bring these performances to the public's attention, utilising all the opportunities the internet and archives offer.
Through Delpher, I came across "Edele Brabant," a family magazine and organ of the Brabant Movement. It mentioned that Les Précieuses Ridicules was scheduled for the weekend of September 11-12, 1948, during the University Days in Waalwijk. Not even three years old, and already performing with a pianist!
Like a miner, I dig deeper in Delpher until I find the next gem in the newspaper "De Stem" of July 5, 1950: "550 red-berets leave for Rome."
The newspaper article states that of the approximately 1,000 students of the Roman Catholic University of Nijmegen, 500 are going on a pilgrimage to Rome. They leave on August 25 and return on September 8. The article also mentions that the members of the various subdivisions of the Nijmegen Student Corps, such as Les Précieuses Ridicules, St. Vitus, and Dr. Alphons Diepenbrock (choir and orchestra), are diligently rehearsing their repertoires, so they can give performances at the various stops along the way. I decided to make a map of the route with the stops. Red is the outward journey and green the return.
Source: De Stem
I begin to daydream and wonder where the group danced overnight. Perhaps even in the Eternal City of Rome. I pick up my pickaxe and dig even deeper. This yields the following find: "The Catholic Illustration"; Sunday reading for the Catholic Dutch people, no. 37, 1950. It contains a general account of the pilgrimage, during which people sometimes had to sleep in tents or in the open air. There's no mention of performances, but there is this photograph to the left.
Source: De katholieke illustratie
Time to grab the pneumatic hammer and dig further, and then I stumbled upon three reports in "DE LINIE" (The Line), vol. 5, 1950, numbers 231, 232, and 233. In a series of articles entitled "Between Cologne and Paris, Night Journal of a Pilgrimage", Carel Swinkels (poet, journalist, and prose writer) describes the journey undertaken. In part 1, we actually read that on the night of August 25th to 26th, the indestructible dance group "Les Précieuses Ridicules" performed in the salon of Nancy's town hall. This was accompanied by a spindly choir, which I assume is the Dr. Alphons Diepenbrock Choir, because LPR singing the club song "Et Viens," can hardly be called a choir.
In the second report, we read about the events in Rome, but nothing about performances or anything like that. The final report does touch on the event, which takes place during the night of September 6th to 7th in Chalon-sur-Saône: "The Nijmegen dance groups "Les Précieuses Ridicules" and "St. Vitus" then had the night of their lives on the dance floor, when a boisterous audience cheered them on in the theater, even occasionally asking for an encore." The drawing below depicting this event was made by Kor Sarneel.
Sources: DE LINIE nr 231, nr 232 & nr 233, Carel Swinkels and Ko Sarneel.
And this concludes the first episode of 80 Years of Performances by our association. Time to take off my miner's clothes and wash up ;)
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