The good news is that the school board met and decided to work the make up days into the regular year, as opposed to extending the year so that they go longer. When they do that it means that we get to have 'dress down' make up days (normally it's all uniforms all the time), and they get to be FUN for everyone days (think field trips and stuff like that).
Their first make up day was assigned as attending the Multicultural Festival 2014 in our local area. It was 4 hours of performances and vendors and fun that we all got to enjoy together as a family. It started at noon with the first performance hitting the stage at 12:15. We got there about 11:50 so we had plenty of time to find seats.
The first performance was a group from a studio that teaches Middle Eastern dance. I tried to take pictures of them, but they ended up being all blurry and out of focus. So, no visual. Sorry. It was interesting to watch them because, while it was similar to belly dancing, it was completely different all at the same time. They used a lot of scarves and were in full length dresses (unlike the belly dancers we watched later, who were in traditional belly dance costumes).
Next, we watched the Falcon family perform traditional Indian dances from several different tribes in the upper Midwest.
This was the family's last year at the festival because they had decided to move back home to the reservation where their relatives currently live so that they can teach their children about the culture and their kids can grow up around their family. We were really glad that we got to see them before they left, because it was awesome to watch them perform. They explained their outfits and the different parts of the dance. Then, at the end, they brought anyone that wanted to go up onstage so that everyone could dance a round dance together. I couldn't have paid the girls enough to get on that stage.
After that were students from a Korean performance school in the area.
These girls were doing what they called a 'drum dance'.
This boy played the Korean harp. This was probably my favorite performance of the festival. He was probably only about 10 or 11 years old, but he played this massive instrument so amazingly well. It was a beautiful song, and I loved it.
And the girls that did the drum dance also performed a traditional fan dance. This was beautiful. I tried to get a picture of the dancers in a circle with their fans, but they were moving to fast and they just came out blurry.
At this point, the batteries in my camera were showing that they were getting low. So the rest of the dancing pictures turned out terribly blurry and not worth posting. The list of performances we watched after the one's posted above were Irish dancing and clogging (by the same studio), belly dancing, a contemporary music group, and a chamber string ensemble. We tried to make it in to watch the children's opera group, but they must have performed before we made it there. Because they shut down the stage before the designated time that they were supposed to be on. And we showed up at the time the program said they were supposed to perform.
This made the youngest girlchild extremely sad. She sooooo wanted to see them sing. We had to visit the balloon animal lady to make up for it.
Needless to say, everyone left happy. :D
All in all, it was a pretty good day of family time spent learning about other cultures and seeing some of their traditional costumes and dances. I didn't get to go to last year's Indian Pow Wow with the girls, so I'm glad that we got to spend the day together and am looking forward to doing more things with my amazing girls in the future.
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