Saturday
30th August and Sunday 31st August: London’s
Truman Brewery in Brick Lane will host the Tiger
Beer Singapore Chilli Crab Festival for the third
consecutive year on a bigger scale. The festival
will transform London’s East End into a Singaporean
oasis. The festival celebrates the crowning joy
of Singapore, the Chilli Crab, which is Singapore’s
unofficial national dish. Drenched in a fresh tomato
and chilli-based sauce, Chilli Crab is best enjoyed
using fingers. There will be plenty of Chilli Crab
on offer at the festival along with an array of
other traditional Singaporean dishes which will
get taste buds tingling including Chicken satay,
Char Kway Teow (a delicious rice noodle dish) and
Hainanese Chicken Rice.
Bayswater based Singaporean restaurant Kiasu will
prepare all of the food at the festival.
There will also be a live entertainment throughout
the weekend, including dragon dancing, martial arts
displays and skillful musicians from the School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Other activities
will include a henna-tattoo artist, massage therapist
and calligrapher together with a tea-stretching
spectacular, where Chinese tea is poured dramatically
from great heights to enhance the flavour.
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12th
July and the 10th September 2008: Elizabeth
Taylor's Jewellery Goes On Display
Elizabeth
Taylor's jewellery from the 1963 film Cleopatra is on show
at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco as part of a major new exhibition
dedicated to the female pharaohs, wives, mothers and daughters
who influenced three thousand years of Egyptian history.
Items
including a royal headdress in the form of a vulture, scarab
engraved bracelets and double chains embossed with medallions
form part of the "The Queens of Egypt" the largest
Egyptian exhibition ever to be staged in Europe.
Christiane Ziegler, curator of the Reines d'Egypte, said:
"In the western imagination, the Queens of Egypt
are incarnated in Cleopatra and the enduring images created
by Hollywood. The jewellery and accessories worn by Elizabeth
Taylor for the film were an integral part in creating these
images".
The Hollywood epic was infamous for near bankrupting 20th
Century Fox after filming had to be shut down in London
and moved to Rome when Taylor became ill and was unable
to work in British weather conditions. Taylor was also reported
to have become the first $1 million-dollar actress when
she was signed up to play the lead opposite Richard Burton.
More than 250 superb antiquities and works of art are on
display at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco between 12th July
and the 10th September 2008. Other beauty items and accessories
on display include a silver hand mirror with a wooden handle
sheathed in gold and shaped as the emblem for the goddess
Hathor, a gold diadem set with carnelian gemstones and opaque
turquoise glass and a gold collar necklace belonging to
Queen Tiy set with stone and pale gold electrum.
The exhibition focuses on the image of the queens and how
their aesthetic ideals varied from one era to another just
as modern day tastes and fashions shift. Reliefs and free-standing
sculptures, illuminated in light, help evoke the true power
of their beauty. With few exceptions the queens are shown
in the first flushes of youth with the luxury and refinements
of their individual lifestyles reflected in their clothing,
jewellery and toiletries.
Exhibits have been loaned to the Principality by the world's
leading museums including the British Museum, Cairo's Egyptian
Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Paris'
Musée du Louvre and the State Hermitage Museum in
St. Petersburg
Details
The exhibition runs from 12th July until 10th September
2008.
Open everyday from 10am to 8pm. Late-night opening on Thursdays
and Saturdays until 10pm.
Entry costs:
Adults: 10 euros
Concessions:
Groups (over 10 people) 8 euros; Students (under 25 with
a student card) 6 euros; Children under 12 go free.
Tickets can be purchased by email to the Grimaldi
Forum Monaco Ticket Office,
Tel: +377 99 99 3000 or simply from the Executive Traveller
Concierge.
Buda Castle
and Hungarian Open Air Museum to host 17th Budapest
International Wine Festival
Wine lovers have the chance to sample some of the
best that Hungary offers at the 17th Budapest
International Wine Festival from 10-14 September
in the historic Buda Castle and the Hungarian Open
Air Museum at Szentendre. Around 170 Hungarian wineries
will exhibit as well as a few other wine producing
countries and it’s a great opportunity to
learn about the wines, as well as enjoy traditional
food and festivities.
With about 1,000 wines to sample, a grape wine auction,
grape harvest procession, together with cultural
programmes such as classical and jay concerts you
cannot afford to miss this festival. Saturday there
is a Vintage Parade, with around 800 representatives
from the various wine regions dressed in folk costumes
and ending with a lovely show on the festival stage.
Visitors can also take the ‘wine boat’
down the Danube – or the ‘wine bus’
- and visit the Vintage Throng, the sister festival
at Szentendre, an arty and bustling town 19km north
of Budapest, to enjoy more tastings, cellar visits
and the choosing of the vintage queen. Artists flocked
to this quaint town the 1920s because of the special
light and it makes for a great day trip from the
capital.
The Vintage Throng takes place at the Hungarian
Open Air Museum (www.skanzen.hu) a regional collection
of museums that showcase traditional Hungarian village
life through the centuries. In Szentendre the museum
consists of nine stone buildings that show the wealth
of their previous owners who were wine merchants
and craftsmen. Almost all the buildings have cellars
underneath and the longest is 40 metres and runs
under the main square.
Entrance fee:
About £8 per person for a day ticket that
allows multi entries on the same day, plus entrance
to the Vintage Throng. Price includes a tasting
glass, glass bearing bag and two tasting tickets
plus entrance to a few of the museums that are close
to Buda Castle. Transport via the ‘wine boat’
or ‘wine bus’ is not included in the
ticket price.
For more information visit the
wine festival
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The
Spanish Tourist Office, Regent Street Association
and the Crown Estate came together to create “A
Taste of Spain” (www.tastespain.info) on Regent
Street (regentstreetonline.com). The two-week long
festival kicked off on Sunday 25th May with a Guinness
World Record-Breaking attempt for the largest Sevillanas
dance. Regent Street, home to some of the world’s
leading fashion names, with a unique mix of classic
and contemporary style was closed to vehicular traffic
between noon and 4pm and the Spanish who will always
find something to celebrate no matter what time of
the year, were out in their regalia and numbers. |
However,
it was not simply an all Spanish affair; Scotsman
Bill Honeyman was among the many Sevillanas dancers
tapping their feet and performing the famous dance
on Regent Street last week. Bill says that his Scottish
school was the first to offer Spanish as second language
and ever since his first visit to Spain in 1953, he
has always loved the country. The Taste of Spain festival
is due to end on Sunday 8th June. |
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The
Sevillanas dance looks like a flamenco but, while it is
similar, Sevillanas is its own dance. The interesting thing
is that despite the name the dance did not originate in
Seville. It is the descendant of an old Castilian folk dance,
the seguidilla.
Traditionally,
Sevillanas is danced by a man and a woman (though it can
be danced by two women) and is performed in sets of four
couples. The interpretations of the dance vary and most
believe its four parts portray four phases of a relationship
as follows:
• the initial meeting of a man and a woman
• falling in love
• an argument
• reconciliation
You do not have to dance the Sevillanas with a lover.
The
event was very well organised with accompanying singing,
guitar music and hand-clapping, castanets, flute, small
drums and tambourines.
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For
the world record, dancers had to divide the four
parts into “coplas” or verses, and each
copla s made up of six movements. Between each part
there is an “estribillo” or silent transmission
and they had to stay dancing for 15 minutes. The
movements include “paseillios”, a slow
entrance with both arms about the head; “pasadas”
in which the partners dance next to each other;
“careos”, where the couple face-to-face;
and “remate” the final flourish of hard
steps, ending at the same time as the music to create
an emphatic climax. All elements are danced in ¾
time, with one strong beat then two weak ones in
each bar.
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The rest of the day in pictures
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