juli 29, 2010

Presentation day

Door Giselle Vegter

The last day before the presentation we work a bit longer in Dom Penzionera. From the group of ten we now have seven girls left over, one girl cannot join the presentation, she watches. We need to hurry up to get the structure in the right order. We are both sometimes quite strict to the girls, they are not used to repeating, but they are aware this work needs to be done, otherwise they won’t manage in front of an audience. They make big steps. At three o clock we get the message that parents are phoning Forum Zena, asking where their children are. One of the girls has 11 calls from her mother. We have though given a letter to the parents, with the exact regular working times and the information that we would work longer on Friday, but something is not understood. In the evening we work on with glueing the photos the youngsters made on carton, making a slideshow in the computer, finding the right music, going once more through the structure, making cues, checking the loudspeakers. In the late evening we  have barbecue on the Drina with Amira and Paul who just arrived from Holland.

The next morning the girls are fully committed, they are learning out loud their text, they do themselves a run through. There is a nice audience, most of them coming in later, but that doesn’t matter. The grandmother of one of the youngsters also came, the man I spoke with  from the Dialogue Center came, and Nada from Maja, the organisation with whom we will work in the winter. Not many parents are there, maybe it has to do with work. There is a journalist, we give a short interview, then we start. Ilil explains what we have been working on, I see that everybody is listening carefully. The presentation goes well. They are nervous and they like it. Audience is also concentrated. A big applaus. We get positive reactions, it is clear that the girls had got a push in their self esteem. We are happy.

In the evening we attend a Bosnian wedding. We dance the kolo, a round circle dance with a big group. There is live Balkan music, we like it a lot. We eat sheep and drink cola mixed with red wine.