Rope Course

22.07.2010

The loud sound of the alarm clock at 8:15 wasn’t exactly the welcome to a new day one hoped for after yesterday’s hectic schedule. But the NucKids schedule is incredibly tight and doesn’t tolerate a single second of delay. Wake up, breakfast, rehearsals. The kids spent the entire morning immersed in the creative workshops led by their teachers. Improvisation and crafting new sketches in Elena Saleikova’s acting class, breathing exercises and learning to control their voice with Alexander Polyakov, and learning new dance moves to an energetic R&B beat in Maxim Nedolechko’s mirrored studio – that was the ambitious program for today. “You have to give them credit” comments Nikolai Stepanov, the project’s general producer, while observing the scene. “The kids are working incredibly hard. They all understand that the success of the musical depends totally upon their involvement.”

In the evening, a little surprise was waiting for the kids. The counselors had prepared a Rope Course for them. The Rope Course, explains Nastya Burumbaeva, “is a series of specially designed exercises that helped us stick together even more and taught us to feel and understand each other better. It’s called the Rope Course because the main idea is that everyone is working together, as if connected by a single rope.” Across the entire camp, the counselors set up eight puzzle stations. The participants had to divide themselves into six teams, choose a captain, and then collectively solve a series of exciting challenges. “In the beginning,” says Rita Podluzhnaya, “any mistake made by a team member would cause frustration and anger among the group. We didn’t understand that this was a team game, and everyone performed on its own. But with each stage we completed, we increasingly realized that we needed to work together.” The Rope Course is a mutual learning program where participants discover everything through their own experiences and actions. The main goals of the course are teamwork and leadership, as well as the development of self-expression, confidence, the ability to overcome challenges, and a creative approach to problem-solving. All six teams quickly and easily completed the tasks, which shows that the participants already possessed these skills and qualities. “It was awesome!” concludes Lev Suslov.