At the inaugural meeting of the IFMC which was held in London in 1947 the delegate of the Brazilian Government was Dr. Renato Almeida. Five years later he attended the fifth Annual Conference, also held in London, and on this occasion he conveyed an invitation to the Council to hold its 1954 Conference in São Paulo in conjunction with the Folklore Congress which was being organised by the Brazilian National Folklore Commission under the auspices of the Fourth Centenary of São Paulo. This invitation was most gratefully and gladly accepted and two years later a number of members of the Council found themselves in Brazil, including seven members of the Executive Board to whom the Folklore Commission gave most generous hospitality.

The Festival performance of Brazilian Folk Dancers concluded the International Folklore Congress and Folk Music Conference held at São Paulo. It had been arranged by Dr. Renato Almeida who had represented his country at the London Conference on Folk Music in Education in 1952. Dr. Almeida was particularly anxious that his European colleagues should not miss seeing the Brazilian folk dances, so many of which were like the Morris dances he had seen in London, and we naturally hoped for several opportunities to investigate the local music and dance traditions, but each day was filled with conference sessions and formal entertainment. Eventually it became clear that the great Festival performance was to be our only opportunity and we must make the most of it. This was to take place in the grounds of the Exhibition on the evening of the opening day. Early that morning the Congress met for its last plenary session in the Exhibition grounds and then the members were free to inspect the excellent folklore exhibits of the different Latin-American countries. Throughout the morning public attendance at the Exhibition had been very thin; but when the Congressisti set out on the evening visit the coach drove out of São Paulo into a vast traffic jam. The whole population had decided to visit the Exhibition.