Dancing in Skopelos - Agios Ioannis and Velanio Beach (modern dance performance).

It was my mum’s idea.

We were thinking about what to film for my newly created YouTube channel.

I wanted to have a channel about my life as a dancer (in the end, we settled on dance videos like the one below), and the summer holidays were coming up. We were going to Greece (there’s a post about that too). Mum said that, with the summer holidays approaching, people would be looking for places to go. So, to help my channel grow, we decided to film me dancing in the Greek chapel of Agios Ioannis.

Mum bought me a white outfit and cream-coloured socks especially for this!

Dad took a drone and two cameras and packed everything into a suitcase for “filming purposes”.

On the day of filming, we hired a car because Agios Ioannis was far from our hotel.

At first, the road was quiet and normal. Towards the end, though, it narrowed to the width of a single car. There were also loose rocks here and there, and a sheer drop on the left. But there was no oncoming traffic, so we arrived without any surprises.

Steps cut into the rock led up to the little church (because Agios Ioannis was on a rock), and I was afraid my dad, who is scared of heights, wouldn’t make it up. But he did.

It was windy up there. It was cold, but bearable. Besides, I warmed up quickly from dancing.

I danced without music because we hadn’t brought a speaker. I sang the rhythm of the song to myself in my head.

After the recording had finished, my sister and I went to have a look inside. And we found a book for visitors to sign on the window! At first, we thought it was some kind of parish book, or a notebook with the names of saints in it. But it wasn’t. It was an ordinary book for tourists to sign. I found a blank space and wrote: " I am Helena Rajkow and I am not a saint. I danced right here."

There was no problem editing the recording.

Since then, my expressiveness, technique and editing skills have all improved a lot, and I’ve become a bit more shameless too (though only a bit, because I didn’t need to).