Friday, August 24, 2012

Victory Day Reenactment in honor of 9th May, Kiev, Ukraine

This celebratory May reconstruction was absolutely another comparing with last event, where I took part. I want to tell you about our camp life during the Victory Day reenactment this May.



Organizers toughen requirements on authenticity of camp: modern stuff is not allowed. We had to hide all plastic things in our tents.


We have tried to make the tent as much authentic as possible. Certainly, there is a lot of things we should do but it was nice start.
 

Arrival of participants finished in the evening on Friday to provide interesting and full program of reenactment for all of us on two days. But cultural actions have begun already on May, 10th. Wonderful bayan player arrived in camp. He showed us very interesting musical program on the improvised scene from the truck with the lowered boards, army boxes and officer small lamps. There were many military melodies, slightly dancing and even a jazz (the first time heard a jazz on an accordion!). It was great! We sang songs and danced.

 
On Saturday started sport contests and volleyball.

 

Girls tried to creat human pyramids in the Soviet style. The result turned out very good!

 

Sport contest included man's sports: throwing of the grenade, weights lifting, rope pulling, football. Taken with pyramids, we all slightly passed it, saw only results of competitions.

  

One of the most waited events became boxing. The ring was built especially for competition. Sergey Zhuravlyov from our side of Red Army and from allies - the American paratrooper. Referee was the British sergeant.
   
In general, it has been planned as a duel with elements of performance. It was great and very real!

 

The winner is our guy! Hurray!
 

Some guys from spectators have picked up idea of fights. And after the main show all who wanted tried their abilities of fighting. Wehrmacht against Red Army.

 

And after the sport contests there were time for little performance.I took part in it too. Idea was taken from Svetlana Aleksiyevich's book "War has no female face" (i'm not sure about translation; this means that war is very hard for women) Between all girls who wished it were distributed memoirs of female veterans from that book. And all "actors" had to tell this memoirs like they were there and took part in that events. For performance was chosen very bright and tragic fragments.
 
All stories were accompanied by small performances on a background. Someone brought up wounded man on a jeep, shifted on a table for operation, someone installed the telephone line (guess who? :)) so  all of us were in action. There were very emotional but all held on tears. We acted already in the dark. Until the end it was not clear, what spectators thought about our little play. But came last minutes of performance. Phone sonorously rings, Nastja lifts a tube and speaks: “ Girls... The Victory... The Victory! ”. It is a pity there is no video record. Till now  I remember HOW she said it. And spectators have started to applaud! Silently we have returned to camp. Our friends came and sit in silence near the fire. This play was very hard for us because of emotions but it means a lot for all of us.































7 comments:

  1. More Physically fit people than in ALL of the reenactors in the USA!

    Great photos.

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    Replies
    1. :) Thanks!

      But you have so big and great events there. We're a little jealous here.

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  2. Hello,
    I just wanted to take a minute to tell you that you have a great site! Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Liudmyla, are you OK? No Alma 2012 photos?

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    Replies
    1. Dear Scott! Thank you for your care. Yes, I'm OK. I'm collecting the best photos from Alma now to do a post. I hope it'll appear here on Monday. :)

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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