While on the subject of dance festivals, I should write about my good fortune in being allowed to take part in one this past summer. My nephew danced with the Apple Chill Cloggers (www.applechillcloggers.org) who were chosen from the CIOFF pool as mentioned in the previous blog. The festival was the Kucukcekmece Lake Festival (www.festivallake.com) in Istanbul, Turkey.
There were several countries represented: Hungary, Poland, Italy, Taiwan, Brazil, Canada, Palestine, Turkey and the US. I passed magnets out, at least one to someone in each country but often more.
We were treated like royalty of sorts, housed in a very good hotel, three large meals daily, a bus for each team, even a private boat for the Bosporus tour. There were parades as well as performances and a dragon boat race that was cancelled due to choppy water. The stage had a large video screen behind the dancers; the lighting and effects were incredible, not to mention the fireworks after the closing performance. Turkey really went all out!
I heard there were 240 of us and I was surely the oldest one there. Imagine having the only white head among that many youngsters. This is where the magnets came in. I know I took at least 30 of them and my nephew took a few. I often walked up to dancers and handed a magnet to them without having any particular reason to do so. I could tell who I gave it to by the way that dancer smiled at me the following day. Gifting somehow bridged the genreation gap. I left a horse magnet with our bus driver who displayed it with all the red white and blue goodies given to him by the clogging group. Halil, or group's leader, had the daunting task of keeping us together and he got one, too. He deserved a metal but all he got was a little tile magnet!
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| Taipei on stage. |
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| Turkish dancers with a coupr Italians clowning. |
This Polish girl got a magnet as did the boy.
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| Apple Chill Cloggers |
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| Oh, those Italian men! |
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| The Phillipine community from Canada on stage. |
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