Mime Festival – English Festivals and Events

Mime Festival – English Festivals and Events

England is a diverse land full of a number of things to offer. There are  many English Festivals and Events based on tradition. It may seem strange to foreigners, but one has to admit, nobody celebrates quite like the English.

Apart from the normal kind of festivities, I had the chance to attend the London International Mime Festival, which was quite a sweet surprise. Yes, a real Mime Festival!

I attended the performances with a few friends who were all theatre and arts enthusiasts, but I have to say, we didn’t quite get what we expected. Most of us had seen silent plays or something close, but never actually mimes.

I pictured them like in cartoons, white and black with a French hat. But the festival completely blew my mind.

The performances were unveiled one by one; we were all intrigued by the ambience and the entire feel of it. Little did we know what was about to come our way would be memorable for life.

After the Circus tricks and the Extreme Dances, it was time for the Physical Imagery, breathtaking and extremely well-rehearsed moves depicting such sweet little stories. The whole festival was full of such beautiful little anecdotes that shocked us or made us laugh from time to time. Imagine thinking back to when you were a child and your mom or dad reading you a bedtime story and picturing that story unfold in your mind. That’s what it felt like to see these amazing performances!

Dancers and Jugglers glided through every now and then while the mime’s story was told, it was great to see such precise movements and such deep meaningful steps. With every move, the mime shifted our moods as the story unfolded.

By the time this was done, my friends and I were dumbstruck at just how much can a person say with his hands, feet and the way he moves them? We found out that day.

The Mime Festival went on with many great performances; Exotic Japanese Puppetry, Ballet Dances, The Puppet opera, The Fox Dance, and so on and so forth.

It was a night full of lights and stars with art and culture surrounding us. Attending the London International Mime Festival was one of the most artistically liberating experiences of my life.

After the mime festival ended, my friends and I stopped at a small English café on our way back home and we sat and recapped the beautiful performances we saw that day; we talked about the jugglers and the dancers, with their costumes and tricks; the imps and the acrobats with the agile leaps and the soft landings, it all seemed very far away yet still fresh in my memory.

But the thing I can’t seem to forget is the story the mimes depicted, how their fingers could depict a sunrise as well as the darkest hour of the night. I don’t remember each part, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. What mattered was the narrative. The way the story was told.

I’ve lived in many places, and life has been different during them all. But a land where people invest time and money for the education of the human mind, for the preservation of an art, for keeping the essence of telling a story, and for the simple things in life, is a land worth visiting and enjoying all it has to offer. And be sure to never run out of power anywhere on your trip with any of your mobile devices with the best external power for phones and tablets.

Oh, and the mime festival this year is from January 8th to the 13th. If you have a chance, I highly recommend checking it out!

Enjoy!