CueBlog 09

The smell of incense makes the teenager next to us nauseous and as the pastor passes him with the censer, his eyes become watery and he starts to cough. He keeps on praying though, we can only guess for what. The orchestra plays dramatically and the choir rise up to sing. The boy rises too and sings along. “Alleluia, alleluia”.

It’s Sunday morning and the St. Michael and St. George Cathedral at the top of High Street is packed. Today, and during the rest of Fest, the Cathedral might be in higher spirits than usual: it is Spiritfest! For five years now, this has been an official part of the National Arts Festival. “We celebrate art”, says Maggy Clarke, one of the organisers of Spiritfest. “The Festival is a great opportunity for us to welcome people from other places to our church and to show them that art is god-given.”

The wooden bench hurts our back while we’re about to experience an unusual performance. After half an hour of singing and praying, colourfully dressed girls start to float through the Cathedral’s big doors. They start to twirl, they look like angels.

The girls are pretty, light, flexible and have the biggest of smiles. For a moment we thought we saw true angels. But one of the angels accidentally loses her flag, which brings us back to earth: these girls are human after all.

For more about the Spiritfest programme, browse to page 224 in your official NaFest programme book.

Pics by Pauline Holdijk en Myrna Lemmen