The last day of rehearsals, was tight on schedule for practice room. Our expectations for a magical night were in danger because of continous rain.
Sound check was delayed, which caused a few of us to experience stress. At last, even in cold and wet afternoon, people of Sandanski gathered as a loyal and fantastic audience.
After local performers, like singers and dancers, Spain opened "national window" and skillfully warmed-up the audience. italian group followed with energetic and phenomenal show. Simmilar and unusual combination of 2 singers had aswell Slovaks, with their covers of pop-rock songs.
Festival ended with performance of second national Latvia group, with spectacular accoustic songs of calmness and emotions, and also 2 national songs. At the end of the day, we had an opportunity to hear great vibes from our beloved greek DJ on hotel party.
Day four was all about workshops! Everyone started working in their groups, musicians rehearsed, photographers gathered pictures while taking
even more photos and the PR team worked on the rest of the interviews for the final video and updated the blog.
Later that evening, everyone went to the summer theatre, in order to see & listen to some local artists. But the moment we were all waiting for
was when our friends & participants went onto the stage to perform. The Latvian group amazed us with their performance, the Spanish band made
us shake our bodies and the Turkish band "Taksis" made us party even harder!
At the eighth day, the Slovaks woke us up in order to be on time for the bus to Melnik, village known for their passion for wine. When we arrived to Melnik we watched the folk group from Russia, attending a Singing and Dancing competition. After that, we took a walk around the village. We also visited a traditional house, with greek and turkish architectural influence. A surprise was a dedicated winery in cave, with delicious local history.
On the evening, the festival started at town square, with a performance of traditional dances from Bulgaria. Then we all met at the well-known club 'Da Vinci', to have a great time together partying, with some modern music and mad dances.
The sixth day was really fun for everybody. It was the Latvians turn to wake us all up and just like this, a very productive day began. At the workshops, while the musicians were rehearsing, the PR team cooperated with the photographers to set up interviews for the musicians. The interview was recorded and will be part of a final video.
After the hard work was done, it was time to attend the opening ceremony of BYF. Starting from the town square, first we participated on the drum circle and then we parade to the summer theater where the amazing ceremony begun. The opening ceremony was an opportunity to introduce the participants of YES Project, to the Bulgarian audience.
On the fifth day our Macedonian friends had to wake us all up. After breakfast everybody attended their specific workshops and cooperated on pursuing their goals and mission.
Later on, the photographers organized a photo-session with the musicians in order to compose the poster for YES Project.Finally there was held the last national evening by Turkey and Latvia. It was full of spicy flavours from the East and sweet ones from the West.
In the morning of our 2nd (1st for some participants) day we had breakfast and then we all went into the conference room in order to meet each other! We all had our expectations for the project written down on post-it notes and stuck them on flip-charts on the wall, we had icebreaking games and each country presented themselves and said a few things about their country.
Then the first multicultural groups were formed in order to build a tower made of straws and other materials. That was helpful in order to get the teamwork spirit started. As nighttime came, we had our first national evenings with Greece, Italy & Macedonia presenting their countries and their traditional food and drinks.
