Youth Open Festival in Kumanovo

Saturday, the 26th of July, the organisers from the festival were waiting for us. Kumanovo was waiting for us. Just as a huge rain making the streets become rivers. First stop, first step of our project: everyone of us was excited… 

Nothing was exactly planned so far. We were not officially scheduled. A couple of hours later, we agreed to start the performance by the begining of the evening, together with the music. The young rock bands started to play and we came up on the field. All dressed up with costumes, make up, helped by a special guest coming the way from Skopje with us, Carsten, the very first performance could start. Actually, it looked a bit like a test. Everything was held with mostly improvisation. We had to know what was wrong and what was fine with our ideas, what was needed to be improved. We eventually juggled an hour, watched by many curious kids, asking for balls, playing with the two clowns (Pierre and Amelie), sometimes affraid, most of the time laughing.

Later in the evening, we made a fire performance, which was totally spontanous. The very first one for some of us. We were surrounded by people at the same time very interested in the fire tricks but also wondering what was that! Everybody was finally very impressed. And according to the fun that we had, to the emotion brighting in our eyes, this performance was a success.

The conclusion of the first evening was going on in the Citadella, an open air bar. We enjoyed the place and especially the music: Foltin, one the most famous band in Macedonia, was on stage.

Sunday, we went back on tracks! We decided to make our usual workshop : making materials and teaching people how to juggle. With 10 kilos of rice, many ballons and some plastic bottles, we made more than 150 juggling balls. The kids first looked at us making the balls, but really soon they decided to make them by themselves. Actually, they were pretty good in that ! Youngsters having their own balls, we started to teach them how to juggle. And again we were really impressed : kids catched quickly the way how to juggle with two balls, some of them even with 3 balls.

Later in the afternoon, we had a nice surprise : our friend Cebi, from Pristina joined us. With her, we made once again a fire performance in the late evening.

The festival was nice, with lots of rock music bands, which were all of them great. Also the staff was really kind with us. Coming from different countries, they organized an intercultural corner, with lots of amazing food !  We would like to thank all the people of this festival, and especially Ivana, the girl who invited us.

Monday 28th of July, we left for our next destination : Leskovac, Serbia. Some friends are also waiting for us there.

To be continued…