Director: Paralympics opening to highlight value of life

(BEIJING, May 22) -- When the Beijing Paralympic Games open on September 7, an unprecedented cast of 400 people with hearing disabilities will perform a dance entitled "Greetings to Stars," chief director Zhang Jigang told the press recently.

The opening ceremony, he said, will sing the praises of "creativity, humanity and great humanism," and reflect a "stylistic combination of Oriental freehand brushwork with surrealistic methodology," he said, with the hope that spectators would be surprised by a presentation of "fresh and vital lives that exist in everybody's heart but have never been described in literature."

The draft program of the 170 minute performance involves some 6,000 artists composed of disabled and able people. It has been approved already by BOCOG and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Zhang said.

Turning to the closing ceremony on September 17, he said it would last about two hours, involving about 2,000 artists. The performance will feature the host city of Beijing, the integrity of life and nature, as well as interaction from spectators.

According to Zhang, who serves as deputy to Zhang Yimo, chief director of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the Paralympic opening should highlight joint participation of disabled and able people in social life while displaying traditional Chinese culture. But he said he would "pay more attention to the dialogue between lives, release of vitality and rethinking of life itself."

"In short, I would present the world a more romantic, dreamlike, graceful and warm performance and a piece of work reflecting human beings' outlook on life and the universe and a simple but noble China," he said.