Folk arts festival begins in Baoshan with street parade
Eleven artist groups from both home and abroad launched a street parade in Baoshan on Sunday to mark the beginning of an international folk arts festival.
Hundreds of foreign artists in exotic costumes from a dozen countries staged folk dances along with local performing groups while parading along Mudanjiang Road as the grand opening of the Baoshan International Folk Arts Festival.
The monthlong festival will run till November 25, featuring performances in streets, campuses, shopping malls and other public venues.
Highlights during the parade include traditional dance troupes from Uzbekistan, India, Mexico and Columbia, as well as folk arts groups from Croatia, Russian, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia. Local folk artists performed shadow puppetry, acrobatics, drums and dragon dances along with their counterparts from abroad.
Before the parade, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Forum themed on cultural promotion was held in Baoshan as part of the arts festival. Over 300 government officials and experts from both home and abroad shared knowledge and proposals to promote the cultural exchanges and tourism development.
The more than 300 foreign artists will not only perform at local subdistricts and towns in Baoshan during the festival, but will also be invited to experience the local lifestyle with a one-day life-experience event on Monday. The New Zealand Maori art group, for instance, will be invited to stay in a local village house in Luojing Town, the city’s major agricultural site, to experience the city’s rural charm.