Back to last night….
During the day they set up a performance platform and a lot of lights and speakers. We heard some sound checks being done during the afternoon, but we didn’t know what was going on. Our apartment is one small medieval village block away from the main square, St Stephen’s Square, but it is surprisingly quiet inside. Apparently stone walls absorb sound.
So when we ventured out for dinner, we were quite surprised to be greeted by the sounds of Tchaikovsky‘s Waltz of the Flowers. And we were even more surprised when we turned the bend and saw a whole bunch of small sailboats moving around in the harbor with spot lights playing off of them. It was absolutely magical. We tried a couple of times to ask people on the street what was happening and why. Actually asked the sound guy what was going on and was this some sort of ballet of boats. He Enthusiastically nodded yes and that was the end of that.
We walked around to try to get different views of the harbor as the boats continued to dance to one classical music piece after another before finally snagging a corner table at one of the Harbourside restaurants so that we could still have a view as the performance went on and on and on. There we managed to get a little more information from another diner, sitting next to us who said that there had actually been a parade earlier of local officials because it was a celebration of their patron Saint Stephen - of Saint Stephen’s Square fame.
As it turns out, a ballet of boats was not far off as the performance is called the Dance of the Sails involving a specific kind of sailboat with something called a Lateen sail. The woman here at the hotel said that some of the boats are local, but most of them come from another town on this island called Vrboska. Some Google, searching, if we believe that, claims that the dance of the sales is supposed to imitate sailboats fighting for the wind. No matter, it was a really lovely, unexpected surprise. (My apologies or you are welcome 😉 for the short videos…I am always afraid they won’t upload, but I think you can get the point....in fact these are YouTube video links cuz I couldn't get them to upload even though they are small)
And
No comments:
Post a Comment