FOR more than 70 years, students have come to the Bathurst Eisteddfod to display their talents in music, speech, drama and dance.
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On Saturday, the event got under way for the 73rd time, with the stages set at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre (BMEC).
Eisteddfod president and dance coordinator, Ros King, said that it was a great first day of the event, which will run for nearly three weeks.
Dance groups led the program on Saturday, but on Sunday the dancers shared the spotlight with those entered in speech.
Mrs King said dance adjudicator Shayne Samoley has seen a lot of outstanding performances already.
“He has been very impressed so far with the talent,” she said.
Dance, speech and drama performances will run during the first two weeks of the eisteddfod, with speech and drama finishing on September 5 and dance concluding on September 7.
Music performances will finish the eisteddfod, being run from September 6 to 14.
There have been more than 4500 individual performances entered into the eisteddfod, with some performers coming from well outside of the Bathurst region.
Ms King said there a number of reasons that people are prepared to travel that far just to perform, including the quality of the adjudicators, the quality of the venue and the friendly assistance that’s provided by the committee and dedicated volunteers.
“There are some performers where this is like their 10th or 12th year they’ve come. They started when they were five years old and now they are 17,” she said.
