NucKids and Big School-Break

This winter project lasts for only 10 days and ends with shows of 8 performances, which are staged within a week under the guidance of the project’s creative team: director (Vladimir Karabanov), choreographer (Maxim Nedolechko) and composer (Ilya Efimov).

As it is known, NucKids stay in touch with each other online, and sometimes even take part in different festivals and competitions between the sessions of the project together. This year was not an exception. More than 15 NucKids participants of different years met in Artek to stage the musical Big School-Break within the within the framework of the same name project.

The Big School-Break is an all-Russian project in which schoolchildren from 11 to 17 years old are divided and perform team tasks in different areas. This year’s contest has a total of 9 topics or challenges : Create (for those who dance and sing), Preserve Nature (for those who care about ecology), Change the World Around (for those who are interested in “smart cities”), Be Healthy (for those who lead a healthy lifestyle and are interested in medicine), Create the Future (for those who follow the development of science), Tell the Biggest Story (for those who are interested in journalism), Do Good (for those who often help others), Get to Know Russia (for those who like to travel) and Remember (for those who are interested in history).

Selections for Big School-Break have been going on since March. In the summer, online team castings were held. One of the participants of the NucKids 2020 project, Diana Subbot, took the Tell the Biggest Story challenge. She gathered a team and together they created a thematic calendar Life Skills in the summer.

“In July, when NucKids started, I was still in the team phase of the Big School-Break. I studied with our creative mentors on the project website in the morning, and in the evening I called my friends to solve cases. I solved the last of them on the day I left for Moscow for the project. As a result, it turned out that I packed my suitcase for the project as quickly as possible – 1.5 hours before the train departure”- Diana shared.

When the regional semi-finals were held across the country, which only determined the finalists, the NucKids were already preparing for the meeting at the Artek Children’s Center in Crimea.

The selection to the acting and dancing cast of the musical took place in several stages. First, the participants sent their video applications with songs, acting excerpts or dance numbers. Based on their results, the jury selected about a hundred of the best candidates and held an online casting. Where the candidates entered by 10 people and showed their prepared performances.

Based on the results of these online selections, the children were invited to the finals of the Big School Break.

Then the online classes began, which were held similarly to the online part of NucKids 2020, – the children analyzed the script and learned songs.

The finalists of the creative selection staged a musical with 12 songs in three days at Artek and presented it at the opening of the Big School Break Final on November 1st on the stage of Artek Arena.

“Unlike NucKids, where we have time for friendship, cool socializing with new people and a relatively quiet staging of the show, we don’t have that time at the Big School Break. Rehearsals went on for 12 hours straight. It was cool to be involved in such a process, but we really missed the atmosphere of the project” – shared Ruslan Byakov, a participant of Nuckids 2020.

Wait for the latest news! Faithfully yours, editorial staff And see you at the Winter Tale 2020!

From editorial staff with love