The colour effect At the Cairo Opera House Palace of Arts, pantomime and mime artist Amr Abdel-Aziz presented his intriguing live performance, Colour Blindness. An experimental corporal mime performance, it was previously performed at the 24th Youth Salon (held at the Opera House last year) where it received a prize. The show compares the mime art as “the basic unit of all the theatre arts” to colours: “If colours can give you feelings and effects in silence, the mime performer too can give feelings using parts of nature such as colours, sand and salt. It was a very powerful performance, the audience felt how colours have an effect on our life and some of them felt that they wanted to do as I did to experience colours in the same way,” Abdel-Aziz explained. (see Listings p.21) The Polish Embassy in Cairo gave a party at Marriott Hotel to bid adieu to Polish Ambassador Piotr Puchta who is completing his term in Egypt. Among Puchta's friends who flocked to his farewell party were Ambassador of Oman Khalifa bin Al-Harithi, Jordanian Ambassador Bishr Al-Khaswana, and his Palestinian counterpart Barakat Al-Fara. Also present were Indian Ambassador Navdeep Suri, Japanese Ambassador Toshiro Suzuki, Russian Ambassador Serge V. Kirpichenko, Greek Ambassador Chris Lazaris, South Korean Ambassador Yung-So Kim, French Ambassador Nicolas Galey, head of the EU Delegation to Egypt Ambassador James Moran and his wife, Chinese Ambassador Song Aiguo, Armenian Ambassador Armen Melkonyan and Romanian Ambassador Cornel Alecse as well as painter Farid Fadel, his wife the PR executive Mona Zaki and politician Esmat Al-Sadat. The Cultural Development Fund, presided over by Mohamed Abu Seada, will launch the 19th edition of the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium this month. Details about the number of Egyptian and foreign sculptors participating will be announced at a press conference scheduled to be held on 22 January in the presence of Abu Seada, together with curator and founder of the symposium artist Adam Henein. The symposium is held annually with the aim of reviving the ancient art of sculpture, exposing Egyptian sculptors to their Western counterparts and promoting tourism in Aswan as one of the most important archaeological cities in the world. At the Marriott Hotel, Romanian Ambassador to Egypt Cornel Alecse gave a reception to celebrate Romania's 95th national day. Among those present were French Ambassador Nicolas Galey, Japanese Ambassador Toshiro Suzuki, Tunisian Ambassador Mahmoud Al-Khoumeri and Iranian Ambassador Mujtaba Amany as well as former minister of administrative development Ahmed Darwish. Minister of Culture Saber Arab together with Port Said Governor Samah Kandil and the head of the General Organisation of Culture Palaces (GOCP), poet Saad Abdel-Rahman inaugurated the Port Said Culture Palace. The ceremony featured an exhibition displaying 58 miscellaneous artworks and a presentation of the palace's new theatre, which holds 510 seats. The Nile City Cinema saw the premiere of the recently released film Garsounera (Bachelor Pad), starring Ghada Abdel-Razek, Nedal Al-Shafei and Mondher Rihana and directed by Hani Gerges Fawzi. The stars of the film were present at the premiere together with celebrities and media figures like TV presenter Hind Reda, media figure and Abdel-Razek's husband Mohamed Fouda, Editor-in-Chief of Al-Watan newspaper and media figure Magdi Al-Gallad, actors Mohamed Nagati, Ahmed Tohami, Randa Al-Beheiri, actress-cum-producer Isaad Younis and TV presenter Poussy Shalabi. Celebrating the New Year, pop singer Tamer Hosni featured in a giant concert held at the Cairo Stadium's indoor hall with the attendance of nearly 3,000 of his fans. At the same time Lebanese singer Samo Zein rocked the Saraya Nile Boat till the early hours of the morning. One more concert celebrating the New Year took place in New Cairo with Lebanese singer Rami Ayash, who gathered a huge number of fans performing his hit Al-Nas Al-Rayaa (The Nonchalant) as well as older songs with the participation of audience members on the stage. On the 43rd floor of the Foreign Ministry, overlooking the Nile, members of the press enjoyed lunch with Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmi last week. Fahmi, who took office last August, insisted that this was a social gathering and asked those present to refrain from talking politics. Although some reporters tried to ask political questions, Fahmi tactfully managed to avoid answering any. The ministry spokesman Badr Abdel-Atti and dozens of reporters, including Al-Ahram Weekly's very own Doaa El-Bey, attended the event. The American Cancer Society (ACS), in collaboration with the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), have selected Dr Mohamed Shaalan, professor of surgical oncology and director of the Prevention and Early Detection Unit at the National Cancer Institute — Cairo University, to author “Cancer in the Eastern Mediterranean” in The Cancer Atlas. This edition of The Cancer Atlas will be launched at the Union for International Cancer Control World Cancer Congress in Melbourne, Australia in 2014.
