The largest ever Arab arts festival in the U.S., “Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World,” opened at the Kennedy Center in Washington last week.
The first in a series of PBS reports on the three-week festival, which aired on Feb. 23, sets the scene with interviews of the aritists, Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and Alicia Adams, the Kennedy Center’s head of international programming.
Click here to watch more PBS videos from the Arabesque festival
Eight hundred performers from all 22 Arab countries are to take part, including Berber singers from Morocco, whirling dervishes from Syria, a Somali hip-hop artist, Palestinian theater performers, singers, dancers, poets, painters, story-tellers, artists and craftsmen.
Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser told PBS the festival is in fact about more than art.
“I believe that peace comes from understanding,” Kaiser said.
“I believe that this festival is going to help people to understand Arab people, to understand their aesthetic tastes, to understand their hospitality and their generosity and their passion, and we’ll start to understand them not just as political beings, but as human beings… All we see on television are people running around, escaping bombs or thrusting bombs, and we don’t see on television very much that has to do with the other side of the culture of the Arab people.”
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The Al-Farah Syrian children’s choir, which performed in Washington on Feb. 24, visited the Detroit area on Friday. The group of over 100 kids and teenagers, based in the Lady of Damascus Church in Syria, sang Byzantine, Muslim and Christian Arab songs to a Southfield crowd of over 1,000. |
The group of over 100 kids and teenagers, based in the Lady of Damascus Church in Syria, sang Byzantine, Muslim and Christian Arab songs to a crowd of over 1,000 at the Southfield hall.
The Washington festival continues through March 15.
For information or tickets, visit www.kennedy-center.org or call 202.467.4600 or 800.444.1324.
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