On 2 June our Students and Colleagues celebrated the much-awaited second edition of an Avicenna sequel called International Student Festival (AISF2). This Festival is the celebration of diversity and cultural awareness at AIC and its popularity and importance is on the rise as many more AISFs will follow.
This time among our invited guests you could find the mayor of our district 8 András Pikó and representatives of distinguished Budapest based universities such as the Metropolitan University, IBS and Milton Friedman University, then the Venezuelan Embassy, supporters from the Indian Cultural Centre, Korean Cultural Centre, Vietnamese Cultural Centre and the ELTE Confucius Institute.
The event started with the welcome speech of the President of Avicenna Dr. Shahrokh MirzaHosseini and district mayor András Pikó which was then followed by performances of 10 different nationalities native to AIC witnessed by about 160 participants in Avicenna’s back garden.
The first round was Vietnam with a Vietnamese classical dance courtesy of the Vietnamese Cultural Centre and came Emma from grade 11 who sang a love song, Linda from grade 9 who performed an electric pop dance and finally Vuu also from grade 9 played the drum to the greatest delight of the audience seated in the courtyard pavilions.
Next in line on the podium was the Indian performer who showed her exceptional skills dancing the Kathak which is one of the eight major classical dances of the Indian subcontinent followed by a drum show, the tabla.
Margo from grade 9 represented Nigeria by playing a piece of Ludovico Einandi’s White Clouds from the movie Untouchable on the violin.
Saleh, assisted marginally by Subhi from grade 11 recited a poem in Arabic in a traditional Syrian dress.
There came Iran with a variety of performances. First, we saw Mahdyar and Kiar playing the guitar, followed by a group-dance of EFP students and Sarvar from grade 11 to entertain the audience with a popular Kurdish dance.
Korea also made an unforgettable show with 15 K-pop performers on the podium followed by our very own Korean student Sangh who sang a Korean love song to say goodbye to us as his family is moving back to Korea soon. We also enjoyed outstanding performances by the dancers of Neowoul Dance Company and Mugunghwa Dance Company.
Torrential rain came down to interrupt this fantastic and steady flow of performances, so the guests and performers were invited to go to AIC’s lobby aria to taste the food found at the national food-stalls while others were visiting the various national traditions-stands indicated by national flags and banners along the corridor on the ground floor. The large conference room close to the reception aria was busy with activities you can only see in an international market: Chinese calligraphy, Chinese traditional clothes trying-on, Hungarian zither teaching, Hungarian felting and leathering, Indian henna painting (Indian Cultural Centre) Indian saree draping (Indian Cultural Centre),Turkish ebru painting (with the recommendation of Yunus Emre Enstitüsü), Russian card game teaching by Andrej Kitain from grade 10.
The event was crowned by an energetic and colourful traditional Chinese Lion dance after which the second AISF came to an end, students volunteered to tidy up the rooms and all the guests and students went home. We received many congratulations and local press attention, high level recognitions that makes us only more determined to go ahead with the project and start preparing for the AISF 3 that should be even more colourful, visible and exposed to public attention.
After lunch as the rain stopped some of the guests tried their hands at Hungarian and Turkish archery in the yard, whereas inside the building invited performers held Chinese Taiji teaching and Indian Tabla (drumming) teaching, Hungarian folk dance, Indian Kathak dance and yoga teaching.
article by Steve Szabo
