Weekend In Review: Dubai International Dance Festival, 2015-16 Art Season

Dubai’s 2015-16 art season got underway last week with a kickoff event at Alserkal Avenue. The city is packed with new art exhibitions that just got underway, including Portraits of the Middle-Way at Showcase Gallery and HER at Gulf Photo Plus. Also Eid Al Adha is now underway, and the Dubai International Dance Festival started last week and wrapped up over the weekend.

The Dubai International Dance Festival

The Eighth Annual Dubai International Dance Festival kicked off last Monday and continued through Saturday at the Jebel Ali Beach Hotel, Atlantis, The Palm, the Ibis Hotel at the Dubai World Trade Centre, and the Dubai Marine Beach Resort and Spa. Some of the world’s greatest dance talent came to Dubai for the annual dance festival, which also featured world-renown bands, youth orchestras, and music ensembles from all over the world.

100 Years of Begum Akhtar’s legacy

Photo Credit: Dubai Calendar

Indian singing legend Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, better known as Begum Akhtar, would have been 101 years old this year if she were still alive. On Friday and Saturday, the Malhaar Choir honored her musical and dance legacy in a live concert at the Madinat Theatre. The event was a blowout of proportions never done before on Begum Akhtar’s work.

Matilde Gattoni’s HER at Gulf Photo Plus

Photo Credit: Gulf Photo Plus

Dubai’s 2015-16 art season is now officially underway, and Gulf Photo Plus launched a new exhibition featuring work by French photographer Matilde Gattoni. The pieces from HER focus on the many women she has had the opportunity to meet from all over the world. The artist has been in 25 different countries spanning four continents, meeting all kinds of women in her travels, from war refugees and domestic violence victims to victims of cluster bombs. No matter where she went, Gattoni encountered a high level of resilience in the women she met.

The show runs through Oct. 31.

Portraits of the Middle-Way at Showcase Gallery

Photo Credit: Alserkal Avenue

Also this past weekend marked the first weekend for Showcase Gallery’s new exhibition entitled Portraits of the Middle-Way. The show features work by Olivia Pendergast and kicked off last Monday during Alserkal Avenue’s Galleries Night. She painted the pieces for the exhibition while living in Kenya and Malawi. Most of the portraits show people from a rural Malawian village or from the Kawangware Slum.

The show runs through Oct. 14.

Eid in Dubai

The Eid Al Adha season is officially here, and the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment has an exciting lineup of entertainment and shopping deals in honor of the end of the Hajj pilgrimage. Eid in Dubai runs from Sept. 17 to 26, and most of the biggest activities are next week. Every evening during the 10-day festival there will be fireworks at Jumeirah Beach Resort.