May 1st is the russian orthadox easter. It's also the day of the festival of all countries which have friendly relations with russia. It was basically a gathering of moscow residents from all over the world (excluding western europe and the united states).

Since having moved to moscow (as opposed to the extremely multi racial chicago), I've become too used to seeing all white, russian faces. It's kind of an odity to see some one of another nationality here. Moscow feels like such a sad place too. Just a feeling of sadness, that I can't quite explain... But when we arrived at this festival, all the sadness and monotone of the culture just...... LIFTED! It was such a brilliant feeling, people dancing in the streets to every type of music from all walks of life and cultures. Capoeira, hip hop, kazak national dances, turkish dance, drumming...

And then as it got dark, some kids started spinning, and people from Afganistan to Madagascar to Columbia to Azerbaijan were dancing to hip hop, rap and rasta music.


VIDEOS: Playing Capoeira | Turks Dancing | Mongolian (?) dancing | Drumming | Central Asian Dancing



Approaching the festival

It's somewhat rare to see different skin colors in russia... so here it is, blatently russian architecture (text and all), with people from all over the world in front of it.

Nicaragua and Peru were two of the countries represented.

Turks dancing, there was a lot of dancing.

These two people just sat in the middle of the square and played for hours.

Ethiopeans.

Kazakhstan

I don't know where these boys are from, but this could just as well be a scene from chicago.

Hip hop culture meets the russian police force...

A capoeira Roda started in the square. There was just something really beautiful about the man and the little boy watching.

Accompanying the Roda with singing and the barimbau (a bow like instrument with a hollowed out gourd)

His smile blew me away. He is from columbia.