Commonwealth Games Handover Celebration

Submitted by edg on Tue, 12 Oct '10 4.30pm
Time & place
Description

Ninety primary school children from across Edinburgh strut their stuff in Festival Square as they perform a special 'sport dance' to celebrate the Delhi Commonwealth Games Handover Ceremony taking place at this year's Commonwealth Games.

The Edinburgh Commonwealth Games Handover event, which is part of EventScotland's Games for Scotland initiative, is one of a number of events taking place across the country designed to create a sense of pride around Scotland's hosting of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.

The children from Stenhouse, Prestonfield and Royal Mile Primary Schools have been training hard with instructors from Dance Base, national centre for dance, to prepare for their Games for Scotland dance exhibition. Their dance will be performed in front of the Big Screen before the Delhi Handover Ceremony is broadcast live from India.

Sport Dance involves using sports skills choreographed into a dance routine.

Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop believes that the Commonwealth Games in 2014 is "an unrivalled opportunity to show the world what our nation has to offer and to create a lasting legacy for the whole of Scotland."

"Already the Games are inspiring Scots to get involved and to get active. It is fantastic to see so many communities joining in the celebrations as we start our push to Get Scotland Dancing and create an Active Nation."

Global Audience

The Games for Scotland event in Festival Square has been organised by the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games Legacy Group, namely: the City of Edinburgh Council, Edinburgh Leisure, NHS Lothian, Festivals Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh and Stevenson College.

Edinburgh's three Delhi handover 'cast members', who were selected to represent the city in the Games' mass-choreographed closing ceremony, have produced a video blog diary of their time at Bootcamp. This will also be broadcast on the Big Screen on Thursday afternoon.

The Handover Ceremony marks the Flag Handover from Delhi to Glasgow, and includes an eight-minute creative programme to showcase Glasgow and Scotland to the rest of the world. The performance, which will involve a mass choreographed dance routine, will take place in the spectacular Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in front of a stadium audience of 60,000 during the Closing Ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. The performance will be beamed live across the Commonwealth to an estimated audience of 1 billion people.