Beijing's New Choices for Summer Outings: Don't Miss These Performances This Week

Midsummer is in full swing with chirping cicadas and scorching air. Check out these shows for a cool summer!

Ballet "Qixi"

Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine's Day, is the most romantic traditional festival in China. The neoclassical ballet "Qixi", jointly created by artists from China and France, interprets a classic story in a contemporary, aesthetic manner, exploring and piloting the integration of international perspectives and Chinese stories around the theme of "love and being loved".

Time: 19:00, July 12; 14:00, July 13

Location: National Centre for the Performing Arts

Roam About The Classics 2025

Kent Nagano, a renowned conductor in the world today, will grace the "Roam About The Classics" concert series at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, along with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg (Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra). The event this year will also be joined by Rafał Blechacz, a champion of the International Chopin Piano Competition and so far the only Grand Slam winner of the best polonaise performance award for all types of music, including Polish dance music, Mazurka dance music and concerto.

Time:

19:30, July 9: "Looking Back and Leaping Over" - Concert No. 1 by Kent Nagano, Rafał Blechacz, and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg

19:00, July 10: Commemorating 255th Anniversary of Beethoven's Birth - Concert No. 2 by Kent Nagano, Rafał Blechacz, and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg

Location: National Centre for the Performing Arts

"Midsummer Serenades" - Double Piano Concert by Andrei Ivanovitch and Oleg Vainshtein

Russian pianists Andrei Ivanovitch and Oleg Vainshtein will jointly present a wonderful concert with two pianos. The repertoire spans classical and romantic works, including those by Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. This July in Beijing, the audience will be treated to "midsummer serenades" and the magnificent world therein depicted through black and white piano keys.

Time: 19:30, July 13

Location: National Centre for the Performing Arts

Sino-French Fantastic Co-Production: "20000 Lieues Sous Les Mers"

The play, adapted from the classic science fiction novel 20000 Lieues Sous Les Mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas) by French writer Jules Gabriel Verne and created in China by Christian Hecq, a director and actor from the Comédie-Française, will star by Bao Jianfeng, a famous actor, and Ehsan Tayir, a teacher at the Performance Department of the Central Academy of Drama. It cleverly combines a comedic plot with breathtaking blacklight puppetry, transforming the treacherous and ever-changing deep sea into an exciting fantasy drama full of surprises and humor.

Time: 19:30, July 11/12/18/19; 14:30, July 12/13/19/20

Venue: Beijing Performing Arts Centre

(Source: National Centre for the Performing Arts)