Our dance group Tokra (tokra.ee) won the first prize in DanceShow Formation Adults category on IDO Estonian Open Championship held in Tallinn, 12-13 April 2008.

Choreography of our victorious dance ‘Kalinka’ was arranged by Valli Kisand.I hardly heard anything about the festival in the local media, I think the organizers of the festival are to be blamed for not advertising and promoting the event. Nobody seemed to care that Estonians won in several categories.

From the 1..2 minute short story I saw on TV few days later, I heard that 9 countries with 2000 contestants attended the festival.

Kalinka, the Russian song to which the choreography was arranged, might be the best known Russian song of all time as said on Wikipedia.

I wonder whether Russian judge was tired of the song or did not feel Estonians should dance by Kalinka, but in the final we got the lowest place (5) from the Russian judge, while other judges granted us with better places than that – Estonia (4), Latvia (2), Norway (3), Finland (1), Germany (1), Lithuania (1).

Estonian organizers have always been excellent in following the given timetable, unlike similar festivals in some other countries where the delays can be up to 6 hours. Yet as a negative comment for the organizers we were all shocked to find out that the organizers had not arranged an immediate medical help to be by the dance area to help with injuries. On other festivals we have used to see one or few first aid persons in the front row along with judges, but in Tallinn, when one of the foreign contestants actually injured herself while performing, girls form our dance group ended up giving her first aid before ambulance arrived as there was no-one else helping her.