A few months back, Al Azhar Kelapa Gading High School participated to The 55th Beskidy Highlander’s Week of Culture in Zywiec, Poland. They are not only participated in the festival, but also take part to compete with 13 other groups from different countries in traditional dance competition. The festival held from July 27th to August 5th 2018. This group has 13 dancers, 9 musicians, 2 teachers, along with CIOFF Indonesia’s President himself, Mr. Said Rachmat and Ms. Yunita Hardiyanti.

 

During the festival, they bring 5 dances; Greget Jawara Dance, Genggong Dance, Enggang Balian Dance, Yapong Dance, and Tokecang Dance. Actually, they had prepare 7 dances, but because the time limit and the material did not totally done, they did not performed Kareppa Dance and Nandak Ganjen Dance. During the festival, the groups stayed in Debowiec Hotel, in Bielsko Biola. 

 

 

This festival mostly consist with 45 performance for each group and in 6 different cities. On the first day, they had a street parade and after that a 45 minutes street performance. For the next few days, they also performed a 45 minutes performance but in several different cities, such as Szczyrk, Zywiec, Oswiecim.

 

 

 Beside all the 45 minutes performance in the city, they had a countries night for all the delegates. But each group only had a 30 minutes performance to show their dances and music. They had a chance to met and gift exchange with the mayor. They also met the director of the festival.  between their busy day with all the performance, to refreshing they went on tour to see the city of Krakow. 

 

Not to forget about the competition, the concept they used for the competition was a medley dance. First, they used a storyline from a Bali dance, called Kecak Dance, which tell a story of a girl named Sinta is gone missing. Then, they also used Saman Dance from Aceh. So it was a medley of Bali and Saman dance. But unfortunately, they did not win.

The audience during all the festival constantly had a long applause for the Indonesia group. Once, on their last performance in Szczyrk, the audience seemed to like Saman Dance, because they requested the group to perform Saman Dance again. 

 

 

After almost 2 weeks in the festival, the group finally had to leave the festival. But before went back to Indonesia, they had a tour from 6th - 12th August. They went to Prague, Salzburg, Venice, Milan, Mount Titlis, and Lucern. On 12th August they went back to Indonesia from Zurich Airport, and on 13th August they arrived in Jakarta, met their family and friends again.