Chinese Cultural Week to open with music show

What: The Chinese Cultural Week
When: February 22-25
Where: Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Foundation premises, Al Rigga Road, Deira

Dubai: The Chinese Cultural Week starting on Monday at Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation in Dubai will showcase that country's rich art and culture.

The programmes open with the performance of the all-woman Beauty & Melody Ensemble at 7pm.

The programmes include an exhibition of plastic and ceramic arts, the screening of a Chinese feature film (dubbed into Arabic), a concert on Chinese cultural heritage and a seminar on Arab-Chinese cultural exchange in which Chinese intellectuals fluent in Arabic will speak. An internationally known Peking Opera group will perform at the closing ceremony.

The Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation will issue a book containing examples of selected contemporary Chinese literary works, translated into Arabic, including stories, and poems. The ensemble has a group of talented young female musicians, all of who graduated from conservatories. They are not only professional instrumentalists, but also qualified in singing and dancing.

Beauty & Melody was established in 2004, affiliated to the Sichuan Provincial Singing and Dancing Ensemble, and it toured abroad almost 20 times for performances and cultural exchange programmes.

The performances, lectures and cultural exchange activities won them praise from audiences including in Geneva (2005 for the 60th anniversary of the United Nations), Los Angeles (2005), Macau (2006), Los Angeles-San Diego-San Francisco-Sacramento (2006), Poland (2006), South Africa (2006), Mexico (2007), Spain (2007), Czech Republic (2008), Taiwan (2009), and the US Midwest (2009). Sha Zukang, Chinese Ambassador to the UN, expressed his admiration of the ensemble, saying: "I never saw such a lot of audience for the performance of a nation in the history of Palais des Nations."

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