A Festival triangle. Triangles can be different. My son - a mathematician by avocation and partly by education - says they can be: isosceles, equilateral, rectangular, acute-angled, obtuse-angled... I can add the Bermuda Triangle both geographically and cinematically (“The Bermuda Triangle” - an excellent Polish crime film directed by Wojciech Wójcik). Business coaches could tell you about decision-making triangles, and romance writers - about love triangles.
THE FESTIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF MOUNTAINS has its triangle too. It is geographical in nature... It stretches between Stary Sącz, Nawojowa and Nowy Sącz. In the former two places there are dormitories, and in Nowy Sącz there is a student hostel, where the Festival participants are housed. In each of these places they stay overnight, eat meals together, spend time getting to know each other and forging comradeship within a circle of three or four ensembles.
It is customary for the FESTIVAL organisers to make a Saturday night round of all the accommodation places, meeting the ensemble leaders, guides and interpreters. That is the time to find out if everything is all right after the first meals, after becoming familiar with the accommodation conditions, after the first moments spent with the comrade ensemble.
In his capacity as the organising director, Piotr Gąsienica introduced the members of the night round team, brought up the issue of safety and its concomitant rules, emphasised the importance of punctuality, as well as shared the information on the Sunday meeting with the town and region authorities, and the holy mass in the evening.
The details concerned with the Eucharist at St Margaret Basilica were presented by Monika Kurzeja, the head of the organising office: who reads the readings, who reads the prayer of the faithful, the organisation of the procession with the gifts.
After the mass, all the ensembles are to parade down to the Stara Sandecja Common to take part in the inaugural concert. This part of the Festival was discussed by Patryk Rutkowski, the concert director and host, who was aided by co-host Hanka Rybka. The ensemble leaders were told that the parade was to pass through the town smoothly and that the stage management required very precise behaviour from the ensembles. Do you want to know the nature of that precision? Join us for the inaugural concert. Let us try and discover the rules that apply during the handing over of the keys to the town of Nowy Sącz, and later, when the ensembles give their short, five-minute performances.
You will be able to see the photos documenting the round, as well as most of this year’s edition of the FESTIVAL, thanks to Festival photographer Kamil Bańkowski. He will be supported by: Kinga Ptak, Zofia Tokarczyk, Andrzej Mastalski and Bartłomiej Wawrzyniak.
