TN teenagers return after being part of musical extravaganza in Russia

Titled Nuclear Kids, the musical extravaganza featured 80 kids from different countries across the world, selected to be part of the programme.

Rajesh Viswa Sudhan, Pavithra Anup and Nishchita Bandekar from the Atomic Energy Central School in Kudankulum, spent a month rehearsing in Hungary along with children from Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Croatia, Egypt, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Turkey and the UK. They staged a musical, performing at a premiere held at Szekszárd (Hungary), which was followed by guest performances in Russia including Moscow, Ekaterinburg and other cities.

Titled The Lomonosov’s Scroll, this musical was mentored by famous musicians and composers from Russia, and a movie was shot on the basis of the performance.

“The programme gave us a chance to meet students of other countries, mingle with them, understand the culturally plural world, learn the art and moreover improve our confidence level,” explained the trio.

This year’s performance marked a tribute to Mikhail Lomonosov, a prominent Russian scientist of the 18th century who influenced the formation of the modern Russian literary language and established the first Russian university, later named after him Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Fourteen-year-old Nishchita, adds that their biggest challenge was communicating with the other students.

“Not everyone knew English, and we had to constantly coordinate with the interpreters to coordinate with everyone.

However, we got used to it in a couple of weeks. The other challenge was learning Russian, as the musical was entirely in the native language.

But I’m happy we pulled it off successfully,” she says.

Picking their trips to Budapest and Russia’s ‘forbidden cities’ as highlights, Nishchita says that their proudest moment was when the trio had to perform a series of performances depicting Indian culture. “We did our bit to portray Indian history with some traditional dances and were met with rousing applause.”

“This year we celebrated the tenth anniversary of Nuclear Kids project.

The children from India are natural at singing and dancing and unbelievably creative. They proved their talent this time too,” remarked Andrey Shevlyakov, CEO, Rosatom South Asia.