The Song Celebration week will bring thousands of young singers, dancers, and musicians to Tallinn and tens of thousands of spectators from all over Estonia and beyond. Youth celebration performers range in age from 7 to 27.
The performances of the Dance Celebration, titled “Bridges”, will take place at the Kalev Stadium on June 30th June and July 1st, three times in total. On July 1st, there will be a folk music party in Vabaduse Väljak (Freedom Square). The most anticipated event for visitors from far and wide is the culmination of the festival—the procession and song celebration on July 2nd at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. Pärt Uusberg is the main conductor of the Song Celebration, Agne Kurrikoff-Herman is the artistic director of the Dance Celebration, and Juhan Uppin is the musical director of the Folk Music Festival.
Pärt Uusberg, Artistic Director of the Song Celebration says, “I think that young people can be seen in many different ways; I would like to see them – at least in the context of the Song Celebration – as pure, unspoilt, sensitive souls, reflecting their souls as well as the Nordic, rugged beauty of our land through music.” The idea for this year's Song Celebration came to Uusberg suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, and he was inspired by Hando Runnel's poem “Valgust” (“Light”), which the composer turned into a song for the festival.
“As a people, we hold sacred that which unites us and distinguishes us from other nations of the world – our land and language, and the traditions and wisdom we have inherited from our ancestors. These are the values we celebrate at the Song and Dance Celebration, where music and dance captivate and unite us. On the road to the Song and Dance Celebration, we learn together to notice and cherish each day what is sacred – our language, our land and also our common home, planet Earth.” The Song Celebration concert starts on Sunday 2nd July at 2:00 PM and runs until 9:00 PM. In addition to the traditional songs that have been part of the Song Celebration repertoire for decades, this time new songs from the composer's own collection have been added.
Agne Kurrikoff-Herman, the artistic director of this year's Dance Celebration, describes the content of this year's event as follows: “The performance is a story of growing up and growing with the times. We tell this story through the symbol of the bridge, which we understand as a strong foundation. It is this symbol – the bridge – that binds together the production to be created, in which the young person, on the way to all these essential values, begins to build his own inner bridge-arches to go along and come back to, to go and stay, to go to meet halfway… to search, to find and finally to bridge to what is his.”
The first Youth Song and Dance Celebration was held in 1962, and the Youth Celebration has been held every five years since then to give thousands of young people the opportunity to experience a song and dance celebration, as not everyone can fit into the ‘big laulupidu' (the next General Song Celebration will take place in 2025). There are also more people who want to attend the Youth Celebration than there is space for, and the participating choirs and dance groups have to go through an audition to show that their singing or dancing skills are at the required high level.
Tickets for the Song and Dance Celebration are available online at Piletilevi.ee for between 8 – 69 Euros.
