On June 10, Minsk / Tatyana Pastushenko - BELTA /. More than 20 new projects will be presented at the final events of the IX Republican Festival of National Cultures, which will be held in Grodno in June 2012. This was announced today to journalists by Mikhail Rybakov, Director of the Republican Center for National Cultures, as reported by a BELTA correspondent. Among the festival's new features are a gala concert of creative groups from CIS countries and a national economy exhibition with the participation of representatives of national associations of Belarus. The next theme for national courtyards may be the spring festival. It is also possible that a photo album dedicated to the festival's history will be published by the next festival. At the opening of the festival, which will take place on June 11 this year at the Belarusian State Philharmonic Society, representatives of 27 nationalities will perform - all of them have prepared one or two creative numbers. For the first time, Turkmen will be among the participants of the opening forum. The National Academic Folk Choir of Belarus named after G. Tsitovich will perform in the prologue of the concert, and at the end, a polyphonic choir of representatives of 14 nationalities will sing. Vladimir Lameko, Deputy Plenipotentiary Representative for Religious and National Affairs of Belarus, in turn, expressed hope that the current festival will be even larger in scale than the previous ones, and noted that nationalities that are not yet officially registered in Belarus are already participating in the forum. -0-

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