On Thursday, November 5, 2009, I had the unique opportunity to see the opening ceremony for the Guangdong Cultural Festival in Shenzhen. The event was held at Window of the World.
I captured some photos and footage from the event, and compiled them together in this short video:
(If Vimeo isn’t working, try the Youtube version)
The event in Shenzhen featured a pop music band (which I didn’t catch the name of) and various acts by a dance troupe. These dances included a traditional Chinese number, as well as numbers highlighting different historical settings. The different periods of history featured were:
- Ancient Egypt
- The Medieval Period
- France in the 1800s (with a Hunchback of Notre Dame storyline)
- Russia during WWI
- London during WWII
This video features most of the earlier numbers. I ran out of space on my memory card after the Egyptian dance.
Apologies for the poor video quality. I don’t have an HD camera, DLSR or Final Cut editing capabilities — just my digital camera and iMovie.
Bridget O'Donnell, 24, is a designer for the
London during WWII like when the Nazis were bombing the crap out of it?
Yes. It was mostly London after WWII, and it focused on this woman whose boyfriend went off to war. They were reunited in the end, etc.
The whole show was very war themed. For example, at the end of the Russian number, they had the men dancers dress up as soldiers marching through Moscow. On the screens behind them they showed a video with (I think) real Soviet soldiers marching. This was all set to uplifting music. It was definitely idolizing Soviet Russia, which I thought was hilarious, albeit slightly disturbing.