Dance - hidden language of culture

Dance - hidden language of culture

#youthexchange #erasmus+ #globalization

30 participants from 7 countries will explore the phenomenon of globalization in 10 days through research. We will exchange our culture of folk dances to explore the difference.
Objectives:

Debates about globalization, get an opinion about this topic (is it good or bad)
Make historical research about folk dances in each of the countries (7)
Research and social pool of youth about cultural roots.
Compare different cultures
Get to know how to dance folk in practice
Create a performance for local youth inspiring
learn how to deal with different cultures, languages, and traditions with openness and willingness.
Having an understanding of and respect for how ideas and meaning are creatively expressed and communicated in different cultures through the art of dance.

Activity duration: 10 days
Explore the phenomenon of globalization through research. We will exchange our culture of folk dances to explore the difference between them.
Basically, our project has 4 parts.

The first part is about Erasmus, youth-pass, introduction, team building;
The second part is about the Globalization topic, research, and problem understanding;
The third part is about folk dances and making our Final product (a performance for local youth to inspire save a culture);
The fourth part is ending, evaluating, performing, and creating new ideas for the future.

We need to start with Globalization - what is it? How it influence culture? On dances? How does it influence youth? on us? Is it a problem? How can we influence? We are youth, and our needs are cultural awareness, youth need to know their roots, not to be lost in the culture, to hold important cultural roots inside, to know some dances that they always can share in our world, to share knowledge about their own nationality. To share knowledge in generations. To understand and accept differences between cultures, to understand that folk dances have a history inside, it's not just a body movement inside is more, we need to love our roots and understand our traditions, it is interesting. We want to plant a seed in participants about understanding differences, learning other cultures and don't be lost in our big world which is globalized more and more every day.

The project is supported by Latvian Agency for International Youth Programs is an institution of direct administration subordinate to the Minister of Education and Science. Financed by European Union

Project Diary of participants

INTRODUCTION - Day 1

Dancing without using hands? Or dancing without using legs? That's no problem for our team! Today was the first day of the project "Dance - the hidden language ofculture", which means dancing will be an inevitable and beautiful part of every day here. We spent the day getting to know each other (including, of course, our favourite dance moves). We also discussed our expectations and fears about the project, learned about youth exchanges, Youthpass and youth goals. Overall, Chisinau has been very welcoming. To the wonderful first day (and night) of the youth exchange, and to even more amazing next days! Sănătate! (This is how they say cheers in Moldova)

RESEARCH - Day 2

The day had a lot rain, a lot of thinking, many cups of coffee, learning and networking. We started our morning with an intellectual energizer, to trigger our minds and get to know each other. After that, we worked in national groups and we researched and presented about globalization and how it impacts each of our cultures. The discussion become more alive with open debates where we could express our opinion freely, verbally and physically by choosing sides. In the middle of the day, we continued our networking with an icebreaker, during which we had to complete fun challenges in an active way. We created images of our every day life in an interactive way.
We also visualized the future by thinking how dances may look by change of time, using the world cafe technique in our teams. In the last session, we improved our choreography skills and created a few minutes performance inspired by the music given to us by the organizers. We closed our day with some chill beers and further discussions.

FOLK DANCES - Day 3

Our morning started at 9am from the breakfast as usually. In the first half of the day we split in 3 national groups and did a research about folk dances: Moldovan, Latvian and Greek. It was very entertaining to discover new things about other countries dances. Latvian team showed us polka and gallop dances, Moldavians showed us Matura, Ciuleandra, Capra, Alunelu, Greek team were especially original and they showed us a whole dancing story. The next activity was meditation, which included 3 parts : basic meditation, meditation through the dance and writing meditation. We meditated on total for 1.5h. We all enjoyed and stayed very happy and relaxed after it.
In the end we all danced again our traditional dances, but at this time we were needed to present the dances which other teams have presented. We finished our day with Greek cultural night. We are becoming a real team and we are bonding.

SOCIAL POOL - Day 4

Free day for the project. After breakfast some of the participants went for a morning walk in Dendrariu Park. At 12:00, we all met (except from Greek guys who were late again) to go to the Valley of the mills (Valea Morilor). We were walking for a couple of hours, we saw the Lenin 's statue and the sculpture of Little Prince, and played some huge chess. When we left from the park, we were all hungry so we ran through the city to find local food. After that we went for a walk in the yard sale. At the end, we went out to have a drink all together.

DANCING PRACTICE - Day 5

To learn two completely different national dances at the same day is Mission Possible for our team! Greek "Sirtaki" and Latvian "Ābrama polka" was rehearsed during the day. As a reward for our hard and fun work, we had an opportunity to please our eyes visiting National art museum of Moldova and prolong our coultural explore with tasty Moldovan wine, homemade cognac and bread'n'salt as a greeting. But the night is still young. And so are we, therefore dancing in the moonlight is like the cherry on top for our day.

DANCING PRACTICE - Day 6

Two days before the end of this wonderful program. First we woke up and ate a rich breakfast at 9 am. Then we started energetically for the dance presentation to the children from Moldova that will take place tomorrow. All three countries went to the ballroom, we started with energy and enthusiasm the final rehearsals before the final presentation until 2 in the afternoon. Then we went to the stage where the presentation will take place tomorrow to see our seats and get organized. At the end of the great night we went to Alunelu park to listen to dynamic and relaxed music as well as dance.

DANCING PRACTICE - Day 7

We understood that globalisation has big impact in dances espacially folk dances. Social media, imigration and etc. conects us, therefore sometimes we lose what is our and gain something new. What we see today is not what we saw 5 years ago, and what we see now wont be the same as later.

FINAL PERFOMANCE - Day 8

The last day and a little sad. We woke up like every day at 9 o'clock to eat breakfast and get strength for the big show to the happy children with their wonderful smiles. Then we all went on stage to dance the wonderful dances and the three dances but also to dance with joy to the children who came and brought to life the dance that only children know how to do. We then went to the conference room where questions about the subjective opinion program were conducted and at that time we said goodbye to three adorable girls with lots of energy who had to leave early due to travel. On the contrary, our psychology did not fall with the little energy we had left, we went with all the children who were left to have fun on the last night in the little prince's park with berries and wine but of course lots of dancing until midnight. Thus ended a wonderful day but at the same time emotional because it ended a pleasant everyday life.