International Night in Georgia
Kazakh digs deep to deliver performance
Sharing your culture through presentations, national cuisine, songs, or traditional dances are all great ways to teach people about the country you are from and its history. I had a great opportunity to represent Kazakhstan at the international night that my high school recently held. This became one of the brightest memories from this year.
On international night, we could perform a fashion show or a traditional dance, and since I already had dance experience, I decided to dance. However, it wasn’t that easy, because although I knew elements of our traditional dance, I also needed to combine all of them to create a full dance. I spent weeks learning more about my cultural dance and eventually made my own.
At rehearsals, I got to know so many people from different countries: Ethiopia, Iran, Vietnam, China, and India. Only in the USA could I meet representatives of all these wonderful countries at once. I’m so grateful to be here and be able to become friends with them.
All of the students were very nice and very pretty in their costumes, and although we had only three days to practice, we were super excited for the show itself. We had two shows, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.
In the afternoon, we already had about 200 people in the audience. We performed successfully, but we could not expect that in the evening more than 500 people would come! There were no seats left; people had to stand to watch the show and all of them came to watch us! I was shocked and happy. I was so excited to represent my home country to such a big audience and do my work as an ambassador.
I was so excited to represent my home country to such a big audience and do my work as an ambassador.
I was the only dancer on the stage for my dance, so all attention was on me. I was a little bit nervous, but I love to perform in front of people and I was aiming to do my best and show them a good dance.
In the end, we had a great show, and after that night, so many people recognized me! They waved to me in the hallways, followed me on social media and more. Even the substitute teacher that was checking attendance recognized my name and asked if I was the one who represented Kazakhstan.
That was absolutely amazing, because I understood that more people than I thought saw Kazakh traditional dance and knew about Kazakhstan. I was so glad that I accomplished my main mission to represent my country and make a full cultural exchange with American culture and with all the others that I mentioned before!
It wasn’t easy to prepare for the international show, because I was still in track and field season, but I managed to do both because I was enjoying doing both! I didn’t give up when it was hard. I had goals in front of me: to be a good ambassador and get a full American sports experience. Everything is possible; you just need to make some effort!
—Yerkezhan (FLEX, Kazakhstan), hosted by the Lau family (GA)
