While you are busy wrapping gifts and bringing in the holidays, I will quickly wrap up the Liss Fain Dance year with this brief and cheerful newsletter.
Belarus and Poland were our hosts for two and half packed weeks in September. To sold-out houses and standing ovations, the company performed at the
Belaya Vezha International Theater Festival in Brest, Belarus; then moved on to Grodno, Belarus and the Grodno Drama Theater, directed by Alexander Tebenkov.
Our kind and well-organized hosts and our tireless translators helped us constantly as we navigated streets, markets and restaurants with Russian signs we could
not read. The US Embassy staff was on hand for the performance, and joined us for breakfast before we all set off again.
This time to Poland, as the guest of Ryszard Kalinowski, director of Lublin Dance Theater, co-director of International Theaters Festival and the Contemporary
Dance Forum in Lublin. In Chelm and Lublin, the company performed and taught workshops to enthusiastic crowds. What a contrast to the chilling visit we made
to Majdanek, a Nazi concentration camp in Lublin. There is nothing I can write to describe how we felt and what we saw---a penetrating moment from the grim
past that punctuated the non-stop bustle of our activities.
This tour was made possible through the generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the US Embassies in Belarus and Poland.
And then it was home to San Francisco and great coffee, at last. We celebrated November with a performance at the opening ceremony of Mint Plaza,
San Francisco’s newest outdoor gathering place. It was a pleasure to dance in an outdoor space, with a varied audience, making art a casual element in
peoples' daily life. Throughout the year, we plan to perform in outdoor gathering spaces, where art can be informal and accessible.
LFD performance announcements included on respective websites:
Embassy of the United States: Minsk, Belarus
United States Diplomatic Mission to: Warsaw, Poland
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