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5th Sabah International Folklore Festival

Sabah was host once again for the 5th time since 2001, the International Folklore Festival.  In conjunction with the festival, a friendly competition of respective folkdance is held at the Sabah Cultural Centre, here in Penampang. Countries from many parts of the world congregate here to showcase their popular folk dance.  This year there were 13 countries who made it to Sabah.  Dance troupes from Egypt, Indonesia, India, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, China,Romania and Thailand were here from 18 to 27 July but the dance competition was only held two  nights consecutively from 24th to 25th.

This year, I was fortunate to be selected again to be in the IT Technical team which supports the competition scoring system, only this time I was assisting the jury from Uzbekistan.  It was a challenge because the jury does not speak English nor does he knows how to use a computer.  Neither did I know how to speak Russian besides Da (yes), Nyet (no), Spasiva (Thank you) and Dasvidanya (good bye).  Well I’ve tried to use Google Translate, which helps in communicating one way or so I thought.  Fortunately, we were seated next to the Kazakh jury who had an English translator.  Since both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were formerly part of the USSR, they have common language which is Russian.

Me with Orif Atoev (Uzbek jury) and Dana (translator from Kazakhstan)

This year the competition was quite grand compared to previous year as the state government had decided last year to have it annually.  One big difference literally is the large screen on stage.  I wished it was a HDTV cos’ the resolution sucks.  I think it’s one of those screens normally seen in stadiums or outdoor.  Too make matters worst is that the display is too distracting and plays havoc on the camera’s metering.  As usual I brought my camera with me, so while I’m not assisting, I’d be taking pictures.  Luckily this year, Timothy lent his 70-300 mm IS USM lens. I can’t complain about my shooting position as we had no choice but to stay put at where we were sitting.  I did however managed to take some nice pictures though not as good as what I’ve taken at last year’s event.

So here are some of the pictures I took: