Toronto’s Estonian folk dance group Kungla participated along with the Latvian folk dance collective Daugavina, the Gintaras Lithuanian folk dance ensemble, and the Barvinok Dance School Mississauga.
The MC for the event was Virginia Zubrickas. In addition to the spectacular dancers, brief speeches were made by the ambassadors of Lithuania and Latvia and by Reet Marten-Sehr of the Estonian Central Council of Canada.
The accompanying photo gallery for this article was taken with a 70-200 mm lens from several locations in the beautiful hall that was almost filled to its capacity with about 500 onlookers. A separate article and photos using a different lens and a restricted photographic area will follow.
The sequence of dancers in the photo gallery is as follows: Lithuania, Kungla (“Kikkapuu”), Ukraine, Latvia, Kungla (“Vindiga”), Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Kungla (“Sata sata”), Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine (with Hopak, a traditional dance of Ukraine) as the finale. All dancers then gathered on the stage for a final farewell to the audience, which was generous in its support of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.
Text and photo gallery by Peeter Põldre
Fotogalerii
