The traditional Uzbek music is not played often in the Tashkent’s Big Academic Theater. But today is that rare occasion, as the venue is staging Mustafo Bafoev’s opera “The Sky of My Love.” Actors are making their last preparations before entering the stage...

The “Moon-Faced” exposition of modern artists has opened in Tashkent Art Gallery. The exposition presents woman as something abstract, say the artists, while sharing their experiences. The organizers of the exposition did not have any exact frameworks and featured paintings, photographs and installations...

The cooperation between a Russian and an Uzbek theaters resulted in a now project – Nabi Abdurahmanov, a director of the Uzbek Youth Theater has produced a play Nasreddin.love.ru. The premiere has been held this spring in St. Petersburg, Russia, as part of Baltic House Theater Festival. Today the play finally reached Tashkent audiences. The festival hustle and an alien stage (the play is being shown in the Uzbek Drama Theater) paid its toll and technical slip-ups in the beginning were unavoidable. The director even had to apologize to the audience.

Central Asian filmmakers have brought their new creations to the recently opened Cinematic Forum in Tashkent. The lineup of films on the festival’s program represents a diversity of genres, although the art-house emphasis is quite evident. The artistic quality and professional execution both played a major role in the selection. Tajik filmmaking is currently entering its resurrection stage after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A record number of film is being produced this year, although, with the use of unprofessional equipment.

The Princess Turandot, staged by the Uzbek Youth Theatre is still as popular today, as it was seven years ago, when it first entered the theater’s repertoire. In 2004 the Tashkent production was presented at the “Meetings in Russia” International Theatre Festival, where it was highly evaluated by Moscow critics. Famous Russian stage director Eugene Vahtangov has brought the “Turandot” to Russia back in 1922, when the play was interpreted as the hymn of revolution’s victory.

The famous Uzbek theater Ilkhom is staging a new project – an avant-garde opera of a Mexican composer Victor Rasgado ‘The Rabbit and The Coyote.’ Victor has created a new version of the opera specifically for the opening of an international master class for composers. It is now performed only with seven instruments, as opposed to 24 in the original.

The Fourth International Tashkent Photo Biennale is featuring three sections: “Mind Plus Feelings,” “Gestures and Mimicry,” and “Youth and Time.” 29 participants from 15 countries of the world are presenting their works at the exhibition.

The “Clay Letters, Floating Apples” – is a part fairytale and a part real life. The plot revolves around a young teacher who comes to a village with no infrastructure to speak of, to give locals some hope for a better future. When the teacher arrives in the village for the first time, it rains, which is seen as a good sign by people.

A thematic fair “TextileExpo Uzbekistan” is being held in Tashkent for the 5th time. This year more than 30 companies from around the world are presenting their products at the event. Daewoo Textile, for example, produces cotton fabric made from the Bukhara and Andijan cotton. The company is export-oriented and Europe is its major market. The company plans to expand its customer base to the CIS countries by the end of this year...

The Uzbek Theater of Young Viewer is re-staging its “The Story of the Granted Love” play, after it was absent from the repertoire for almost 10 years. The idea of the play came up as a result of the creative cooperation between a director Nabi Abdurakhmanov, a composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovski, and a painter Igor Gulenko. They have been working on the Love Story while busy with another play in Israel. The play features a lot of movement and minimum of words; everything is being expressed through gestures and mimics. Actors have been mastering their every motion for a long time, concerned that the outcome could look like a simple pantomime.