Island Dance teacher stars in new video


June 25, 2008 · Updated 2:07 PM 

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"Jennifer Bondelid, left, appears in costume as Helena Bonvolo on the set of a new video series filmed in Esperanto. At right is her character's love interest, the Bard, played by Aaron Brown of Farmington Hills, Mich. Jennifer Bondelid, a faculty member at Island Dance in Clinton, recently returned from three weeks in the San Francisco area where she was one of the stars in the video series Esperanto, Pasporto al la Tuta Mondo (Esperanto, a Passport to the Whole World). This was the fourth and final filming to complete the 15-lesson language course, a soap opera story of the trials and tribulations of the Bonvolo family and their international group of friends and visitors. Bondelid plays the role of Helena Bonvolo in the film. The video is filmed entirely in Esperanto and has the text and exercises to go with each lesson. The first 12 lessons are presently available, to be followed shortly by the final three. Actors came from all over the world to do the filming, and several stayed to participate in the 32nd annual Summer Esperanto Workshop held this year at the University of San Francisco.Esperanto is a language introduced in 1887 by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof after years of development. He proposed Esperanto as a second language that would allow people who speak different native languages to communicate, yet at the same time retain their own languages and cultural identities. Esperanto is said to be four times easier to learn than other languages. For more information about the course or about Esperanto click the link or call 1-800-ESPERANTO. "

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