Chinese Ensemble shines

Centre where youths with physical challenges kept the audience spellbound.
The ensemble performed its vast repertoire of classic music, traditional songs, dances and acrobatic displays that gave audiences some goose bumps.
Lui Tao dazzled the crowd with his rendition of the song “Shaina” by Alexio Kawara.
Tao took the song and made it his own while the crowd sang along and loved every minute of it. Energy was high on and off the stage with several people taking to the dance floor. If Alexio was there he could have turned green with envy simply because the boy (Tao) brought the house down.
But that was not all as there were many more thrilling acts by ballet dancers and Jin Yuanhui, a visually impaired pianist, played the instrument in a manner reminiscent of Elton John.
Other highlights of the show included a performance of the song “We Are the World” originally done by USA For Africa, “Malaika” and Shakira’s “Waka Waka” dance.
From choreography, costumes, energy and atmosphere, the show was simply out of this world.
Local artistes should take a leaf from the Chinese ensemble especially when it comes to stage etiquette and performance.
Everything went so smoothly such that you wouldn’t think it was the work of visually impaired artistes.
Deputy Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Lazarus Dokora commended the Chinese Ensemble for the performance saying disability did not mean inability.
“The form of the human being is just a housing of the beauty and resilient spirit within. Both in China as well as in our country, tremendous progress has been made to acknowledge the worth of our citizens irrespective of their personal circumstances.
“It’s not long ago that parents with children that have physical challenges often hid them from public spaces or when visited often claimed that the child had gone to some distant aunt.
“Indeed, there was a strong association between physical challenges and vestiges of some belief systems, curses, witchcraft and other beliefs,” Minister Dokora said.
He urged people to learn to provide for maturation of various skills.
“And once the skills are learnt in school, in dance centres . . . the results are edifying. They exalt the spirituality of our being,” he said.
The event was attended by the Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Xin Shunkang, Media, Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu, service chiefs as well as the Chinese community in Zimbabwe.