Written by Laila Vahed (age 12), Raymond Qiu (age 11) and Selena Xu (age 10)
Have you ever seen a woman who can dance with hula-hoops, or a man who can maneuver himself through a squash racket or even an acrobat riding atop her partner on a unicycle. At the Buskerfest street festival Toronto 2015, these are only a few of the things that are performed in support of helping people with epilepsy. Buskerfest street festival will start on August 27th and will continue until August 30th, 2015.
“I grew up really flexible and I didn’t realize I could use it as a job until I was in my teens,” said contortionist Alakazam.
170 performers from seventy countries have come together to help raise money for epilepsy by performing. There are people from Thailand, Peru, Brazil, Australia, Austria, Ireland, UK, USA, Canada and even more places.
“We’re already thinking about which performers to bring back next year and [how] to create a festival that every step you go you see something new and different,” said entertainment director, Mackenzie Muldoon.
While the host was giving his speech, the Saurus dinosaurs stomped through the crowd, capturing all the audience’s attention. If you were chased by a giant seagull, then you probably hit the highlight of the festival. Every singer, acrobat, or magician had a ring of people loving their acts.
“One of the things I’d like to improve is that as well as being an amazing arts event, [the Buskerfest] is actually the biggest fundraiser of the year for Epilepsy Toronto,” said Muldoon.
Buskerfest is one of the biggest events in support of helping people with epilepsy. Epilepsy is recurrent disease which causes people to lose consciousness, have seizures, and other symptoms may be presented based on abnormal electric activity in the brain. 30,000 people have epilepsy in Toronto alone.
There are so many people with talent in the world-including the performers at Buskerfest. The only difference is that the magicians, acrobats, musicians and all the other performers there have a different kind of talent, to spend time to help those with epilepsy by helping raise money to find a cure.
