I was born in Kazakhstan, before I moved to The Netherlands (and Brussels recently) and remember that the notion of being a direct neighbor country with China felt scary and uncomfortable! A sence of fear, but at the same time the admiration has been following each and everyone who is originally from Kazakhstan! Nowadays being in Europe I am not less fascinated by the culture of this country, which is so far, but also so close!
On the 14th of February, while many were celebrating Carnival and St.Valentine’s Day, I joined a full house at BOZAR in Brussels for The Grand Chinese New Year Concert in the Year of the Fire Horse! The New Year is the most important important celebration now in China, which coincides with the New Moon and happens usually in January or February! This celebration is accompanied by festive family visits with delicious food and music!
© photo Yelena van Kharitonova
Each each is governed by the animals traits! The Fire House symbolizes independence, charisma, movement and confidence! But also creative self-expression! This is for sure my year, also because tigers are among the 4 lucky symbols this year! Tigresses am I!!!
The Year of the Horse starts on the 17th of February and promises to set intense tones!
All of us, who congregated on the 14th of February at BOZAR were fortunate, but not by those cookies, but by one of the youngest orchestras in China: WUXI Orchestra, which gave us a unique chance to enjoy traditional repertoire of 3000 years of music history! We also had a chance to hear and see the traditional Chinese music instruments, which were in perfect harmony with Western ones!
Special kudos was given to the conductor of the Orchestra: Sun Peng, who also masterly possessed the qualities of a true showman! He was not shy and hesitating to take the microphone and congratulate us personally with the New Year, Chinese way! It was fun!
The public appreciated this gesture by giving him serious sets of multiple applauses!
© DR
More kudos should be given to all the ladies-musicians, who were dressed in blue colors, actually different shades of blue and having a special folksy design for the outfits! Me, I always pay attention at the visual language of artists, this time was not exceptional! It gave an extra flavor to the soirée and the overall ambience of that event’s program! Behind the organization is Chinese Cultural Center and Mission to the European Union!
At the exit of BOZAR beautiful presents were waiting for each and every participant of the concert: traditional Chinese paper lanterns, which were “cherries on the evening’s cake”! When I was walking back home from BOZAR, I was stopped several times by people on the street, asking me where I got my lantern! That experience was spiced up by the annual Light Festival “Bright Brussels”, which takes place around the city and starts from the Art Mountain! I felt enlightened for that evening literally and figuratively! I saw the light at the end of the tunnel! And the light on buildings!
