The VOENA Family!!: VOENA London Trip - Day 5! Olympic Park, Main Stage!!

Very exciting, an opportunity to perform inside Olympic Park, at the MAIN STAGE!!!

Before we get started with that, we have received a blog post from Annabelle!!! Cell phone and email reception have been somewhat challenging, so here she covers several days of the trip, leading up to yesterday:

I know it's been FOREVER!!! You cant believe the fever of OLYMPICS! The city is buzzing with Olympians wearing their country logos and we even walked into the swimmers from Australia doing their poses in swimsuits against the parliament backdrop!

The torch passing yesterday morning was one of those moments we felt history passing before VOENA as the squad of police cars followed by The British cyclist winner of the Tour de France. Tears rolling down parents faces! Everyone (which means the parents haha) were yelling for that "cyclist" to get out of way of pictures of VOENA and the TORCH! They had no idea until they saw him on the Opening Ceremonies tonight!!!

Last night was the first performance of its kind with Mediaeval Baebes in the cathedral sounds of St John at Hackney! When VOENA joined them in rehearsal, the Baebes went into awe and gasps of joy from the blend of sound! Breath taking sound! The Baebes performed in new gowns and VOENA performed in silk wings decorated with Gaelic and Medieval jewelry which made the Baebes filled with envy (little did they realize that we were ready to gift them these handmade necklaces by our own costume director, Diana Braulik). Katharine Blake, the Baebes founder and composer, lifted her hand high in the air to cut the last chords of voices so that the sound would parachute up to the ceiling and explode all around the audience! Again, tears were rolling!

Today, some of us managed to get to Millenium Bridge and the London Tower to see the incredible Olympic rings hanging from the bridge amidst crowds and crowds of people divided only by languages of their countries. Our day continued with a performance at Central Hall Westminster with a fantastic meet and greet with performers from Beijing and Saipan. Acrobatic moves from Beijing male performers inspired my own son, Dominic Cruz (Voena alumni), to break into handstands and backflips during our picture time. Dominic couldn't help himself and hey, he's my son, so I couldn't help but intersect a cart wheel on the stage! We started a domino effect that infected the other performing groups with Westminster organizers shaking their head (and not up and down). We were definitely NOT English proper! I should have gone to have High tea to calm my excitement!

Tomorrow the Olympics performance!!

Annabelle

What a great update!!! And now, on to the photos!!