The crowds gather at the outdoor
Interlochen Bowl for the final summer season performance of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Interlochen is an International Center for the Arts. This is the final performance for the summer student program.
Our friends, Mary Ann and Del, are seated to my left. The student performers come from all over the U.S. and the world. The 1,200-acre wooded campus sits between two lovely lakes.
We could see one of the two lakes behind the
performance stage. 2,500 students from ages 8 - 18 participated in two summer sessions. They perform for the public several times a week.
All the students are here for the final performance and getting ready to say good-by. Good friendships develop over this time and many were in tears when it was time to leave.
Crowds were in line two hours before this free final performance. When you hear these students perform, you have to really remind yourself that they are not professionals even though they act and sound like seasoned professionals.
The orchestra is tuning up and getting ready for the evening's performance. The
Interlochen School for the Performing Arts was founded in 1928 and is the first and foremost camp of its kind, offering visual and performing arts programs for student artists in grades 3-12.
Final minutes before the beginning of the evening's entertainment.
Interlochen is primarily a 500 student Fine Arts boarding school. Students are drawn to
Interlochen from all over the country and all over the world to celebrate and create excellence in creative writing, dance, motion picture arts, music, theatre, visual arts and college-bound academics. Their school day is an eight hour day divided between academics and the arts. Their school week is from Monday morning through
Saturday morning.
As the evening draws to a close, b
allerinas enchant the audience.
They gave us an amazing performance and just so elegant.
They had us mesmerized at stage front and then . . .
a performance begins on the roof of the performance center.
Interlochen also has a 24-hour listener supported public radio station for classical music and the news. The most beautiful classical music we have ever heard is to be heard every day on this great public radio station. I am not sure a finer classical music station can be found.
The final moments of this wonderful evening of music and dance.
Year-round,
Interlochen also has Professional concerts in classical and modern day
renowned musicians from all fields. Among
Interlochen's 90,000 alumni are actor Anthony
Rapp, actor Felicity Huffman, dancer Peter
Sparling, musician
Jessye Norman, MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient Aaron
Dworkin , singer Josh Groban, and broadcaster Mike Wallace.
The three Indian tribes most commonly associated with Michigan are the Ojibwa (Chippewa), the Odawa (Ottawa) and the Potawatomi. Closely related in language and culture, these three tribes interacted with each other like members of a family. The West Grand Traverse Bay is across from the entrance to the Leelanau Sands Casino at Peshawbestown. This casino is run by these three tribes. 
A short drive past the Casino, is the "Mino Mi'Ku" which is the ceremonial grounds for their annual intertribal Pow Wow.
The three tribes have gathered and are getting ready for their tribal dances.
The Odawa (Ottawa) and Potawatomi called the Ojibwa "older brothers."
The Ojibwa, a tribe of approximately thirty thousand people, lived along the southern shore of Lake Superior. They maintained a large fishing village at the rapids of the St. Mary's River (present-day Sault Ste. Marie) and were renowned hunters and fishermen.
The costumes worn by the Indians were made mostly of animal pelts, rawhide, and bird feathers.
Display of the animal pelts from the animals they trapped. This was hard on me as I love animals and its sad to think if the killing and trapping of animals. In earlier times, this was necessary to provide for clothing and food.
They like us, worried about homeland security.
The Odawa were next born and the Potawatomi were the "younger brothers."
Together, these three tribes formed the Three Fires Confederacy, a loose knit alliance that promoted their mutual interests.
The Odawa, a name that means, "to trade," were skillful intertribal traders.
The Odawa also excelled in making bark canoes, which enabled them to trade all over North America.
The woman are the first group of Ceremonial dancers to take to the dance grounds. Announcements are made in the Indian language and in English.
In 1650 the Iroquois pushed the Odawa from Canada to the Straits of Mackinac. They gradually settled along the shores of Lake Michigan in the Lower Peninsula.
When the French arrived in the Great Lakes, the Odawa had approximately three thousand people.
The men's costumes are very elaborate and the details of the costumes are amazing.
The men danced next and they were the largest group to take to the ceremonial grounds.
The boy's dance was last and this boy had the most elaborate costume and dance of all.
These two boys also gave a wonderful performance. The Ceremonial grounds were away from all other civilization and surrounded by forest on all sides. A sense of pioneer days and large Indian tribes could be imagined upon hearing the Indian cries and drum beats to their dances .
A contest where two people have to "dance" around the Ceremonial circle while holding a potato between their foreheads. A number of couples held out for a long time before that potato took a dive. These two were practicing, but for the actual contest they could not touch each other--so no hands to guide one another.
This couple were one of the last holdouts; however, one other couple prevailed.
