The price of gas is soaring, the cost of living, crushing, crime, surging, and hurricane season at the door. So many reasons to hang your head, but then, there it is, shining like a glowing dancer in the dark…the Festival of the Arts. We may be overstating it just a little, but it seems to us that whenever festival rolls around, there’s reason for optimism – because just seeing so much talent on display nightly makes us feel that maybe things aren’t so bad after all.
It starts tonight and will run through the entire month of May promising to be the biggest Festival of the Arts yet because both the primary and secondary schools’ festivals have been combined in one. There are 273 entries from 40 schools – with 950 students performing on stage at the Bliss Center. The ceremonial opening was this morning and we got a preview of the coming attractions.
Sharon Flowers, Coordinator – Festival of Arts
“The theme for this year is, ‘Art is life, nurture it.’ Regularly we would have had the secondary school festival in February but because of the political climate we could not have had that festival so we decided that we could not just let it go so we are running two festivals in the month of May.
We are going to have the high school festival from the 5th to the 9th of May which means that begins today and from the 12th to the 30th of May, the primary school festival.
The performances continue to get better over the years and so this year I expect better performances from the high schools. We have more rural schools taking part in this year’s festival than ever before.
It is music, drama, and dancing but music in two categories, music vocal and instrumental.”
Hon. Marcel Cardona, Minister of Culture
“We have four key aspects that will be presented during this festival of arts and those are poetry, music, dance, and drama. The events which follow the opening of today’s 2008 Belize Primary and Secondary Schools’ Festival of the Arts shall be and shall form part of our culture in the making, and each and every single one of us present and those participating can be proud of forming a part, and being part of both history and culture in the making as by these acts we are helping to shape our very own culture and history.”
The high school festival runs through to Friday. The primary school festival begins next Monday and will run through to the end of May. All shows begin at 7 nightly at the Bliss Center – and as per tradition we’ll have nightly highlights.
