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Dazzling start to Shanghai Arts Festival
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Lavish settings, gorgeous costumes, soul-stirring music and innovative choreography marked the opening of the 10th Shanghai International Arts Festival (SIAF) at the Shanghai Grand Theater on Saturday evening.

The Nanjing Qianxian Song and Dance Company presented the extravagant dance spectacle, Peony Pavilion, a 16th-century tale of love, death and resurrection written by Tang Xianzu (1550-1616). This Chinese drama has served as inspiration for a number of artists from all kind of genres - from Kunqu Opera to drama and ballet.

Choreographed by Ying Zhiqi, Lu Ling and Wu Ning, this four-act full-length dance revolves around the love between Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei, a love that extends over three lifetimes. Fang Ming composes the score, while award-winning dancer Hu Qinxin is Du and Xu Peng plays Liu.

The choice of this dance as the opening show ties in with SIAF's aims, to "promote original and innovative productions", as expressed by its president Chen Shenglai.

Since 2000, the annual festival has mostly chosen to open with an original Chinese dance such as Wild Zebra (2000), Farewell My Concubine (2003), A Dream of Red Mansions (2004), Hua Mulan (2005), A Hand of Wild Jujube (2006) and Dream of Dragon (2007).

The festival runs until Nov 18 and during its month will present 52 shows divided evenly between local and foreign productions. Most of the Chinese productions are originals. For example, the Shanghai Peking Opera Company and Shanghai Kunqu Opera Company collaborated to produce the brand-new Peking Opera Notre Dame based on Victot Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris; Hangzhou Yueju Opera Company adapts Bronte's Jane Eyre into a Yueju Opera; and the Taipei Philharmonic Drama Workshop and Chorus of Taipei Philharmonic Chamber co-present a musical Shanghai and Taipei - Love Story of Two Cities.

For the first time, the festival will give awards to the 10 best original shows and offer financial support to improve those productions.

Besides encouraging innovation, the SIAF also hopes to promote classical works and to this end the festival's closing event is a concert by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic under the baton of renowned Russian conductor Yury Temirkanov.

Other highlights include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam under the baton of its chief conductor Mariss Jansons; the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the American Grammy-winning violinist Hillary Hahn, the world-famous American pianist Murray Perahia, conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, the St. Petersburg State Molodyozhny Theater and the Zurich Ballet.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the festival, SIAF has also produced a ballet gala featuring dancers from 10 world-class companies including the New York City Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Dutch National Ballet, Ballet De Santiago De Chile, Royal Danish Ballet and Moscow's Stanislavsky Ballet. Artistic directors from all the 10 companies including Xin Lili, artistic director of the Shanghai Ballet, also attended a ballet forum to discuss the future of world ballet.

"At 10, the festival is still young," says president Chen. "But we have already grown into a name known worldwide.

"While we were wondering how to celebrate our 10th birthday, I got a letter from Germany in March inviting me to an international ballet competition and this gave me the idea of getting together some world-leading ballet companies for a ballet gala."

Every year, the SIAF holds a mini-festival in a foreign country and in a local province. For this, its 10th, year, the honor goes to Japan and Central China's Hubei province.

With the Sichuan earthquake continuing to linger in people's minds, the organizers plan to take three shows to Dujiangyan, Chengdu: the dance show Essence by the Hungary Experi Dance; a concert by the Sichuan Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra; and the dance Red Clouds over the Sky by the Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble.

The SIAF will also holds forums, exhibitions and free open-air performances at streets, squares, communities and campuses.

An important event is a five-day fair for international performing arts agencies, companies, government officials, managers and other interested parties with a professional involvement in the performing arts.

More than 1,000 professionals from the US, France, Russian, Britain, Japan, Germany and other countries will visit the fair. "Our purpose is to develop, nurture, energize and educate an international network of arts leaders and professionals who are dedicated to advancing the field of the performing arts," says Chen.

(China Daily October 21, 2008)

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