Today was the last day of the summer school and as always we finished with a performance showing off some of the things we learnt over the week. The theme of the whole course was La Natura. The first week was Air, second Earth and third and last Water. It seemed a good idea to skip Fire as the children in general have enough Fire energy to fill all the weeks one hundred times over.
This week there were seven children and all girls. It felt easy after the boisterous busy boom-bang-bang days that went before. And it gave us the chance to do a story about Les Dones D’Aigua – the seductive sirens who live near the rivers in Montseny.
We danced with cintes – blue and shimmery and painted by the girlsWe played string instruments and rainmakers made out of tubes and filled with sand and shells.
The story was of a village where the people used water without caring how much they wasted. Each girl had a story – washing dishes with a running tap, watering the garden, filling up the swimming pool, flushing the toilet too often ….then one day the water ran out. They decided to go and see the Dones D’Aigua dressed in skirts of ribbon which we made the day before – the workshop is a fairyland with shelves of rolls of ribbon from the family business…… They in turn suggested visiting the Rain Goddess and after a long journey to find her( a chance to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in english) they were promised rain if they agreed to be more careful with water. Back in the village the rain drops began and turned into a torrent and all ended happily.
The stage looked beautiful. What last week was a banana tree sheltering the Tribe of Dogs now became a Rock with a waterfall where the Dones D’Aigua livedEveryone forgot their lines and had to be prompted which was very charming, the story about not being able to flush the toilet after doing a ‘caca’ got a big laugh, noone fell over, the whole thing probably lasted about 15 minutes and it was a delight.
This was something I felt nervous about taking on but I have enjoyed it so much and remembered many things that I used to do as a child and now have a chance to do againAnd Duna wasn’t left out. She came to visit several times and helped some of the girls overcome their fear of dogs – really fear – two of them jumped on chairs when they saw her the first time!
And I can’t resist this picture of Clara showing how it is done with three or four hoola-hoops!