Photos courtesy of Irena Valujeva
P l a c e s We G o Latvia
Dance, Nature, and Cultural Splendor A small group from Camphill Village traveled over the summer to Latvia to experience the country’s rich history and culture, stunning palaces and natural beauty, and to witness a very special festival that welcomes tens of thousands of performers and spectators every five years into Latvia’s capital city Riga. Irena Valujeva, Nadja Jiquet and her daughter Lyra, Nora Nickle, and Mishka Zuckerman attended the Nationwide Latvian Song & Dance Festival together, saw parades around the event, visited museums, and traveled the countryside for almost three weeks spanning late June and mid-July. The main attraction, of course, was the festival—celebrating its 150th year— but the group made the most of every day. “Irena and Nadja thought it was good for me to come to Latvia with them because I haven’t been to other countries since I was a baby in Bulgaria, where I was born,” said Nora, who described a meaningful experience seeing Bulgaria represented during the festival along with other Balkan and Baltic nationalities. “I saw the people from Bulgaria actually dancing and singing in the Bulgarian language. It made me feel like I had the goosebumps.”
The Latvian costume parade in Riga kicked off the festival.
The sets and stages erected throughout Riga—along with the costumes, music, and crowds—composed a spectacle that celebrates a strong tradition of music in Latvia, where Irena is from. The group of travelers also attended a flute and organ concert in the Riga Cathedral, where lives the renowned Dome Pipe Organ, an ornate instrument whose earliest predecessor was once the largest in the world before it was lost to a fire in 1547. It has been rebuilt several times over the last few centuries, and welcomes eminent pipe organ musicians from across the globe.
