Feature: Flashmob dance in Liverpool to display many faces of Chinese culture

Fenfen Huang, artistic director of Liverpool-based cultural organization China Pearl, is holding a flashmob dance, featuring dancers dressed in many of the traditional ethnic costumes of China.

The dance is to take place at a cultural center in the heart of Liverpool's Chinatown, and has been organized as part of the Lantern Festival, the event marking the formal end of Chinese New Year celebrations.

China Pearl dancers will be wearing costumes from different ethnic groups in China to show many of China's diverse cultures, including Han, Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Miao, Yi, as well as Korean costumes.

Huang wants to show that even Britain has diversity when it comes to culture and tradition, and she wants local people to join in the flashmob dance by wearing costumes representing England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

China Pearl will be dancing to the latest flashmob dance sweeping Asia, Zui Xuan Min Zu Feng, translated it means "coolest ethnic style."

Last year China Pearl marked the Lantern festival by performing the flashmob dance, Little Apple, attracting several thousand spectators to Clayton Square in the city centre. It was featured on Chinese TV, shown to an audience of tens of millions.

Huang said: "China is a very diverse country made up of 56 different nationalities, each with their own customs, traditions and costumes. We want our event in Liverpool to introduce different and distinct ethnic cultures in China to a British audience as well as extend the ethnic styles, not just those of China, but to highlight a more global context."

At the Lantern Festival event, which is free to enter, there will also be performances of traditional Chinese dance, music, singing, martial arts, ethnic costume catwalk, monkey masks, monkey drawing and samples of tasty Chinese dumplings, the food most associated with Chinese New Year festivities. Endit