Arts festival trade fair connects talent with producers

More than 30 live performances were held at the festival's trade fair over the weekend.

This year the Shanghai International Art Festival has been making efforts to help match performers with producers. More than 30 live performances were held at the festival's trade fair over the weekend.

Erhu player Ma Xiaohui has performed in the Academy award winning movie, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and put on thousands of shows in many countries. But she was performing in the festival trade fair this weekend in the hopes of impressing producers from around the world.

"The fair is a good platform to learn from foreign artists, and present how local artists work as well," said Ma.

One all male chorus group from Ukraine says the trade fair was their first overseas show.

"We come here to present our Ukrainian culture, and to see other people's culture," said Yuriy Vitoshynskyy, La Vivo Vocal Group.

Those live performances were helping both local and international performing agencies at the fair make deals.

I'm impressed by the variety and quantity of artists and art events," said Omer Bozkurt, Int'l Ankara Music Festival.

"We will look for any good performers and invite them to play on our TV station. And we could also improve our own programs by learning from others' performance." said Wang Yi, Jiangsu Boradcasting Corporation.

This year's trade fair has over 30 live shows, attracting nearly 300 agencies from over 30 countries. And organizers say they plan to invite 30 percent more performers to give live promotion in next year's fair.

Festival organizers have agreed to work with the Hong Kong Arts Festival to produce a Peking opera named Water Margin, that will debut next year.