Munich: Kocherlball at the Chinese Tower – Munich

There should be people who claim they can’t dance. They haven’t met Katharina Mayer yet. The Gaissacher gets everyone who can walk going. Dance is her life, teaching it is her life’s work (there are now courses by herself on YouTube). Her most important tool: contagious passion and love of dancing. Just how happy she is about the “very nice people” who have just attended her three folk dance courses in the Hofbräuhaus to get in the mood for the Kocherlball: “So cool,” she says, “such a good mood, finally meeting again!”

Katharina Mayer has been waiting for this for three years, and with her thousands of supporters of the Kocherlball. The traditional festival, which was revived in 1989 to mark the 200th birthday of the English Garden, was considered a security risk during the pandemic, like all crowds. In fact, you get very close there under the Chinese Tower, and that earlier than at any other ball. The model for the Kocherlball were the festivals of cooks, maids and other domestic workers towards the end of the 19th century, which only took place when the gentlemen on Sunday morning were in church could free themselves to celebrate. Nowadays, the first guests don’t even go to bed, occupying the coveted beer tables as early as two o’clock in the morning; Anyone who arrives at the official start at six o’clock spreads out their picnic blanket somewhere or joins the fray – the whole beer garden is then a dance floor.

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And the eyes are first on Katharina Mayer on stage, a position that she doesn’t like at all, otherwise she would rather give her help “from the circle”. For four hours – “I don’t even have a break to go to the toilet” – she moderates the event and gives the commands; she already mastered this two weeks before the birth of her daughter with a huge pot belly. With her lead dancer Magnus Kaindl, she demonstrates all the steps and figures so that even non-dancers can sway and turn through the narrow space that is left to them. “We keep the entrance threshold low, we show many dances in very simple variations,” she explains. There are round dances like waltzes, polkas or spinners; the “Münchner Française” as a classic of row dancing in a group; and there are figure dances, i.e. couple dances with a fixed sequence to a specific music, such as “Krebspolka”, “Kickericki” or “Hamburger Dreher”. Incidentally, he comes from Lower Bavaria and makes fun of the first German post office in Hamburg, explains Katharina Mayer. She knows her stuff; her father WA Mayer was a folk music researcher, he also took her to her first Kocherball. She is now leading the event as dance master for the 15th time.

Every year she coordinates the repertoire list with the two music groups – this time the Schreiner Geiger and the Tanngrindler Musikanten – and then selects the pieces and dances – sometimes spontaneously on stage, also depending on the respective sunshine or the energy of the guests. This time there could also be one or two more doubles than usual, because the Tanngrindler are pretty crafty at it. And because these tricky pieces with time changes are currently very popular with advanced dancers in the folk dance scene, Mayer gives his own courses (www.tanzart.eu). But of course she doesn’t want to overwhelm the crowd. It’s not about technique and complicated steps, she says, it’s about “interaction with your partner, getting involved, being in the swing together or getting into the flow, no matter how it looks on the outside, head out, and the feelings run up , and a simple rocking step is enough,” explains Mayer. And everyone can do that, in the spirit of the Kocherlball. Because: “Folk dancing is when everyone dances.”

Kocherlball, Sunday, July 17, 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Chinese Tower in the English Garden, canceled without replacement if it rains, weather info noticeable www.kocherlball.de