By Yolanda Utami Nilasari | Project Leader
At our Community Library in Kalimantan, we have a Dance club that runs once a week. Our dance club is quite well known in the area and is often invited to perform during official events. Most of the time, the members learn traditional dances from Kalimantan and sometimes from the other provinces in Indonesia too. Our tutor, Miss Yeyen, was a professional dancer; her family also owned a dance studio. Over the years, though many of our dancers graduated from school and moved to other cities, other young dancers joined the group.
We do our best to encourage the dancers to participate in competitions. This helps them to increase their self confidence as well as conserve the authentic culture of the Dayak people, the native people of Kalimantan. Last year, our dancers participated in the Nusantara Students Festival. The event was hosted by the Indonesian National Radio in the capital city of Palangkaraya. High school students and dance studios from all over Central Kalimantan participated, including our own Dance club…..and we won!
Our dancers were much better prepared this time, as they had learned from their failure in the last competition. The YUM project officers asked their parents’ permission for their children to practice every afternoon two weeks prior to the competition. Thanks to your donation to this project, we were able to prepare the music and the beautiful costumes.
“They danced with full energy. We could really feel the emotions of the Dayak traditions expressed in every movement,” said one of the audience members.
We are so thankful to be able to provide this type of activity for children living around our Community Library, and would love to continue doing so for many years to come. If you would like to continue helping us, there’s an upcoming event which might interest you. GlobalGiving will be matching all donations up to $50 by 50% during their Little by Little campaign, from April 8 to April 12. Mark your calendars!
Thank you as always for your continued support of our library in Central Kalimantan! We look forward to seeing you there one day!
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