A Memorable Morning at the Cat Theatre

As a keen participant in DSU's annual Charity Bike Ride, I always look forward to meeting the children and parents involved in the Charity. Usually that means a once-a-year celebration on Red Square on the finish line of the bike ride at the end of August. In November 2004, though, my family and I were able to meet our DSU friends in a very different setting - the Teatr Koshek, or Cat Theatre, on Kutuzovsky Prospect.
This was a wonderful event that Olga and I and our kids, three-year-old Philip and one-year-old Polly, will always remember. Downside Up invited parents and children from among the Charity's corporate sponsors together with parents and
	children from the DSU programme to see a special show at Moscow's famous Cat Theatre. I understood from the colourful and noisy scene on arrival, on a snowy November Saturday morning, that it wasn't just my children who were in a state of high excitement at the prospect of seeing Yuri Kuklachov's famous performing cats.The theatre itself is a wonderful, intimate setting - a perfect space for Yuri Kuklachov's brand of interactive entertainment. The genial, all-singing-all-dancing figure of Kuklachov captivates his audience: a smiling, avuncular figure,
he likes his young audience to participate at all times in the action, whether it's clapping to the music, or batting huge inflated balloons around the auditorium, or actually going on stage to act as a set of human pillars for the cats to jump between. This was such a happy, life-affirming
event to be part of. Every child and every adult left the Cat Theatre with a sense of togetherness, of shared fun, that I will never forget. What a great idea this was. Many thanks, Yuri Kuklachov and Downside Up! Jonathon Bayntun