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September Opening Ceremony Will Be Virtual

Last night, we showed you the COVID adjusted September Celebrations Calendar.

The bottom-line of this year's Celebrations is that public safety consideration of COVID-19's spread must come first. So, most of the major patriotic events from this month will have to be done virtually, over the internet, so that Belizeans can participate in them at home.

The first event on the calendar is the Official Launch Ceremony, which takes place this coming Sunday evening. For the logistics of this event, NICH and the September Celebrations Commission are working with the company, Flavaz Entertainment.

This year's launch ceremony will be brought to you in the form of a production and live broadcast, which will take place at the Placencia Resort. This afternoon, we spoke to one of the organizers about what you can expect when you tune in On Sunday at 3 p.m. Here's what she told us:

Andazi Panton - Representative, Flavaz Entertainment
"NICH has teamed up with organizations who have already been working within this online, kinda virtual world that we're now living in. They have said, okay guy, we have the September Celebrations coming. We want to make sure that we're still celebrating, that we're showing our patriotism. How can we partner with you guys to make our celebrations happen as well? Flavaz Entertainment has been working on a project for the past couple of months called From Belize With Love. It's a documentary and a live concert series that talks about the Belizean culture, Belizean Music, the Belizean people. So, we had kinda already reached out to NICH, and said, hey guys, this is what we're doing in this new virtual world. They informed us that the launch of the September Celebrations was to take place in Dangriga this year. And we're actually already down south recording. So, we were able to collaborate with them and record all the official speeches from Dangriga, and speak to some people there in Dangriga. And we're able now to present a view of Dangriga, virtually, and then we'll go from that little presentation and official ceremonies on to a concert, which will then show the cultural acts. And the concert will be broadcasted from the Placencia Resort."

We also asked Andazi to discuss what they are doing to observe the COVID-19 protocols such as social distancing and mask-wearing, while putting on this show.

She told us that the venue provides them with more than adequate space to keep all the participants safe:

Andazi Panton - Representative, Flavaz Entertainment
"We'll have the official ceremony, and then we'll have a presentation. It's almost similar to the documentary that we'll be doing for our production, From Belize With Love, where we'll present to you the culture of Dangriga. I should say the culture of Stann Creek. And then, after that, we go into live performance."

"Even though we're doing things online, we wanted to record the performances live so that you still have that feeling of being there. And doing it at a place like the Placencia Resort gives us the luxury to be able to follow the MOH guidelines to be socially distant, while still producing something for the people. So, their property is quite large, and we'll have people separated into different rooms until they are able to come on stage. And we won't have that interaction. We won't have more than 10 people in one place at the same time. Everybody will have personal sanitizers. Everybody will be wearing masks. Our entire crew will be wearing masks and face shields. So though, we're not able to have an audience, you're still able to get that live effect, as if you were there, celebrating."

"We have some amazing performers there. We have Supa G, and we've also asked him to bring the Charikanari drummers and dancers. We have Breda David, and he's bringing the Sambai dancers and drummer. We have the drummers from out of Seine Bight."

"We have even a new artist, Kylon Kerry, and Corwin Ramirez. We have the Sweet Pain band. So, we have an hour of just packed entertainment for you. We'll probably go a little bit over an hour [laughs]. But, it will be a very dynamic presentation."

The Opening Ceremony begins at 3 p.m. on Sunday, and you can see it on Channel 7.

Channel 7

Video: 9th Night Bram