Kate’s Escapades – Prepare to be amazed

I’ll admit it. I’m a fan of the whole reality show genre. I’m always game for a good episode of Survivor or Project Runway (welcome back). Over the years though, I’ve kind of lost some of my excitement for the talent-type shows, America’s Got Talent being a prime example. The “talent” just seems so homogenized, and even a tad bit boring. How many singers, dancers, magicians can we watch before we venture off to a rerun of CSI, after all?

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Seems that is not the case with the Ukraine version of  “______ Got Talent”. Last season’s winner was a sand animator. What? A sand animator? What’s  sand animator? Her name is Kseniya Simonova and she creates her art in sand scattered on an illuminated table. As she is creating her sand art to music, it  is  projected onto a screen for the audience to see. Sounds weird, I know, and I was skeptical before I watched the video. How interesting could sand animation be, right?

Simonova seemlessly moves from scene to scene sculpting and drizzling sand over a light table. This emotional performance is about World War II and the Germany invasion of the Soviet Union. I am not a native Ukrainian (although one of my great-grandmothers was) and cannot understand all of the symbolism or understand the lyrics to the accompanying music, but this performance moved me, just as it did the folks in the audience.

~Examiner.com