Underprivileged children to
perform with NDT team
Shawkat Marcel Khan
Underprivileged children will perform at a grand show along with the Netherlands Dance Theater at Dhaka Sheraton Hotel in the second week of January 2008.
Seventy-two children of Padakkhep and six dancers from the NDT will perform at the show, said the organisers.
To be organised by the Netherlands Dance Theatre and Padakkhep, the show will feature a colourful dance performance by the underprivileged children. Dhaka Sheraton Hotel will sponsor the programme.
The organisers hope that the show will help the underprivileged children forgetting their miseries and encourage them to experience a happier and fresher outlook on life.
‘We will hold the show to develop the spirit and the way of thinking of those underprivileged children, who have been deprived of their basic rights,’ said NDT choreographer Paul Lightfoot, also a member of the 6-member team.
Asked about the capability of the children of performing with a world famous theatre group, he said they (children) were very talented and could easily follow the NDT performers, who are preparing them for the show.
The team is in a seven-day tour of Dhaka now for rehearsal with the children.
The rehearsal sessions will continue till Friday and the organisers will hold a few more rehearsal sessions before the programme.
Other members the NDT team are Sol Leon, Amos Ben Tal, Shirley Esseboom, Medhi Bruno and Marjan Van Lier.
The NDT was established in 1959 by 18 members of the former Ballet of the Netherlands that broke away from the traditional orientated company.
The group was dedicated to explore new forms of dance, using different techniques that opened new ideas and experimentation.
The Netherlands Dance Theater is moving all around the world and is a regular inclusion worldwide for adding excitement to international events.
To disclose the detail of the programme, a briefing was held at the Dhaka Sheraton Hotel on Monday. Paul Lightfoot, Sol Leon, Amos Ben Tal, Shirley Esseboom, Medhi Bruno and Marjan Van Lier and Sinthia Siraj and Jayed Shams Mahbub of Sheraton Hotel attended the briefing.
Star-studded concert remembers
Princess Diana
Agence France-Presse . London
Sir Elton John closed a star-studded concert Sunday in memory of Princess Diana, with police looking on at London’s Wembley stadium a day after Britain went on maximum security alert.
Over 60,000 fans joined Britain’s Princes William and Harry for the six-hour long extravaganza in memory of their late mother, who would have turned 46 years old this weekend.
The princes took the stage before the show, Harry with a rousing ‘Hello, Wembley’ while William said the event ‘is about all that our mother loved in life — her music, her dancing, her charities and her family and friends.’
Then Elton, a close friend of the late princess, got the poignant gig under way with his hit ‘Your Song,’ sung against the backdrop of huge black-and-white photos of Diana by star photographer Mario Testino.
Other performers included Diana’s favourites like Duran Duran and Supertramp.
While there had been rumours that Elton planned to close the show with a rendition of ‘Candle in the Wind,’ which he sang at Diana’s funeral in 1997, instead he finished the night with ‘Are You Ready.’
Despite the safety fears, fans and stars alike were determined to celebrate Diana’s life as they arrived for the concert, which ended at 10:15pm (2115 GMT).
‘I think it’s a really good tribute to her,’ said Sam Mitchell, 32, who travelled from Suffolk, northeast of London. ‘I think she would love it. There are a lot of bands that she liked.’
Extra security measures were ordered after a double car bombing plot was foiled in London on Friday followed by an attack Saturday at Glasgow airport in which a blazing car rammed into the main terminal building.
On Saturday the government raised the national threat level to ‘critical,’ the highest possible, meaning that another attack is expected imminently.
The Diana concert was an obvious target. ‘Policing terms for this event have been thoroughly reviewed by the command team,’ said a spokesman for Scotland Yard, which is coordinating response to the London failed attacks. ‘There will be an appropriate policing plan in place,’ he added before the concert, saying that some 450 officers would be deployed.
William, who turned 25 on June 21, had predicted it would be ‘an incredible night’ of music after watching preparations on Saturday for the event.
Last Harry Potter book sets
online pre-sale record
Reuters . London
The seventh and final book in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become online retailer Amazon’s most pre-ordered product, with almost 1.6 million copies bought globally ahead of the book’s release on July 21.
Amazon said on Monday that demand for ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ passed the previous record of 1.5 million copies ordered online before the release of the previous book in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.’
The retailer predicted that the number of orders for the seventh book would rise by ‘many more hundreds of thousands of copies.’
The figures underline the huge international demand among readers for the final adventures of the boy wizard, which has been heightened by speculation over which characters Rowling will kill off at the end.
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