"The Dragon's Wedding"




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  • 2017-04-25 22:46:22
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[caption id="attachment_36240" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]Svetlozar Apostolov for AUBG Daily Nikoleta Pandzherova (right); Svetlozar Apostolov for AUBG Daily[/caption] The most popular drama from the Bulgarian writer and poet Petko Todorov, according to play director Nedyalko Delchev,  “The Dragon’s Wedding” came to stage on  April 22 in Dr. Carl Djerassi Theater Hall in ABF, performed by the Bulgarian Folk Dance Club “Samodiva”. The plot reveals the Bulgarian socio-psychology of the 19th century and the typical for that time pastoral mentality. Built on the folklore motives, “The Dragon’s Wedding” blends national customs, magic rituals, and sublime poetic speech. It tells the story of the Dragon and Tsena, played by Martin Todorov and Nikoleta Pandzherova, whose love is destined to die before it has the chance to flare up. The club did а one-hour perfоmance watched by a full Carl Djerasi Theаter Hall. The eighth months of rehearsals and the efforts from the actors and actresses resulted in a show that concluded with 10 minutes of applauses from the audience. Georgi Leshkov who played  one of the brothers of Tsena - Stoil is a first-year student who is part of the Bulgarian Folk Dance Club “Samodiva” since September 2016.
“I was chosen to play the role of the angry brother because I was loud and so on. It was very exciting for me to play Stoil and to experiment with the role," said Leshkov.
 Leshkov was born in Bulgaria and raised in the United States, but his love for Bulgaria and its culture made him stay and study in AUBG.
“I decided to join “Samodiva” because I used to participate in folklore dances when I was in the States. I really missed it”, said Leshkov. [caption id="attachment_36241" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]Optimized-_DSC3217 Leshkov (second from right) dancing; Svetlozar Apostolov for AUBG Daily[/caption] “The preparation lasted for something along three months, a bit less maybe. At least that's how long it took for me. For the others, I think they were more active. This was because I had conflicts with my class schedule and practice times”, he continued.
Nikoleta Pandzherova, the president of the club, had to play the main character in the drama – Tsena. When she had to describe the club she uses the word "family", a big one that supports each other no matter what.
“It was three years ago when I first joined the club. It was nothing more than us gathering, dancing together and having fun. I have always danced folklore dances before and when I came to AUBG I wanted to continue with my hobby and I was more than happy to find out about the club”, said Pandzherova.
[caption id="attachment_36242" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]Optimized-_DSC3232 Pandzherova on stage; Svetlozar Apostolov for AUBG Daily[/caption] For her the most challenging element in the play was the love dance between the Dragon and Tsena, because of the fact that she and Todorov (The Dragon) have been friends for a long time and the dance is supposed to reflect the mutual attraction between two lovers. She shared that there were some difficulties that they had with agreeing on the final version of the script but at the end they were both very satisfied with the result.
“We actually started working on it in September 2016. We started working on the script in November and we started preparing the dances in February.  The last dance, the fight', we figured out two days before the performance”, admitted Pandzherova.
[caption id="attachment_36243" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]The fight scene / Svetlozar Apostolov for AUBG Daily The fight scene / Svetlozar Apostolov for AUBG Daily[/caption] The club was founded in 2014 because of the eagerness of the students who wanted to share the traditions of Bulgarian folk dances with the AUBG community. The ultimate goal of the club is to gather students, interested in Bulgarian dances, who are willing to find out and learn more about the Bulgarian cultre.