Bulgarian painter and illustrator Mariana Kalacheva was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Education: 2003 - Graduates the AMDFA/ Academy of Musik, Dance and Fine Arts/ - Plovdiv, Master Degree - Speciality Graphics under the guidance of Associate prof. Vladimir Genadiev and Pedagogy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Prof. Bisser Damyanov. Since 2003 she is a Member of the Association of the Artists in Plovdiv /AAP/. Since 2007 she is a Member of the Union of the Bulgarian Artists /UBA/.
Given that Paul has 4 1/2 months worth of leave accumulated, he took an afternoon off work and we enjoyed a last day at the festival together. The first performance was a group representing American Samoa, imported from the States. It was very entertaining as the announcers kept saying they were from the Island of San Diego! The next performers were from Kiribati: The costumes from New Caledonia were awesome, and their non-costume attire was pretty nice, too.One of my favorites is Tahiti. Tahitian dancing is all about the hips. It is amazing how fast they can move and how effortless it looks. I was a bit surprised to see Taiwan at the festival. These girls' costumes are identical to a doll that Emma has in her collection of dolls from around the world.Tokelou is a group of islands north of Samoa. I enjoyed their oar dance: I was happy to see the Solomon Islands flute dancers perform again on the last day. They had missed a few of their scheduled performances as sadly one of their delegates died of malaria (he already had it - we don't have malaria here). And to finally end the festival blogging, I love this picture from the Solomon Islands group:That night there was a closing ceremony at the stadium. I assumed it would be a whole lot of talking, thanking, gift giving, and more thanking as is typical in Samoa. It turned out that there was a lot of that, but until we heard the booming we had no idea all the thanking was going to be followed by a fireworks show!
mariana santana @ the lions ig: marianaosantana
