By Vestnik Kavkaza
Tomorrow the international festival of Latin American dances “Dance and Be Happy” opens in the State Kremlin Palace. The festival will take two days. “On Saturday the 19th World Cup on Latin American dances will take place; on Sunday we will have a gala night where the audience will see all beuty and skills of participants of the World Cup,” Stanislab Popov, the president of the Russian Dancing Union, says.
Ballerina Anastasia Volochkova said that the festival is important for promotion of dancing art: “I will take my daughter Arina to the show, I want her to see the art of ballroom dances. I believe that evrry girl, every woman should know how to dance. So, promotion of dancing art in the ballroom direction is very important undertaking. We can see a lot of negative information today coming from TV, Internet, magazines, and newspapers. We have to support good and positive things by beauty – first of all, art and sport.”
“One of terms for “a dance” is Esperanto in motion, because for many decades people have been practicing a common program, despite their place of living – America, Asia, Russia. They don’t speak each other’s languages, but they meet and can dance, can have fun, find a common language through dancing,” Stanislav Popov says. “The movement unites people all over the world. It is very important.”
As for the Caucasus, Popov says that from time to time the federation wants to organize the world championship on lezginka, for example: “I know the success will be huge; maybe we will hold it.”
Conductor Vladimir Spivakov visited the Caucasus and told Vestnik Kavkaza about his impressions: “It was the first time I had been in many cities for a long time. We went to Stavropol, Essentuki, we were in Nalchik , we were in Grozny and ended our short tour, very condensed and full of events, in Makhachkala. To learn from the traditions, there is a respect for elders, older people, fathers and mothers, older brothers and sisters. You see, it causes respect. I did not feel any arrogance, I felt pride there - it is a huge difference. Our people often think that they are roosters and when they crow, the sun rises. We have to temper it, learn from it. There are so many wonderful traditions, I am not even mentioning how greatly we were received.
Grozny has left a phenomenal impression on Spivakov: “I was there a long time ago, when the city was peaceful, and as you know I was against the war, and at the festival "Moscow Meets Friends" perhaps the first to invite artists from Chechnya, to be more precise, children, were us, my foundation. They danced. After many years, I even forgot about it. I was approached by a young man, who is now about 18 years old, Mansur, a Chechen, a terrific dancer. His brother sometimes came out of his cloak: he danced, and then out of the blue, right in the middle of the dance, his cloak opened and his four-year-old brother emerged from it and started dancing. And he said to me, "Vladimir Teodorovich, I remember how you told me, 'Mansur, dance, so that people become ashamed for the Chechen war!'"
