The 22nd "Meet in Beijing" International Arts Festival will greet arts lovers in the capital from Jan 6 to Feb 18, with an Olympic theme this year as the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games approach.

As a major sideline cultural event of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, the six-week arts festival, also named Olympic Culture Festival this year, will fuse Olympic culture with arts from around the world. It will cover five major sections, namely, performing arts, visual arts, film screening, urban events and Olympic celebration activities, said the organizers at a news conference in Beijing on Monday. The performing arts section will bring to stage around 100 performances by artists from 22 countries and regions, both online and offline.

A grand gala titled See You in Beijing will kick off the festival at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center on Jan 6, which is expected to revive traditional performing arts via new stage technologies such as 5G and XR technology - an umbrella category that covers various forms of computer-altered reality, including augmented reality and virtual reality. Repertoire includes Let it Go - a song from Disney's computer-animated film Frozen, Jasmine Flowers and Turandot, and a pipa (a four-stringed Chinese lute) solo The Winter Tune played by famous Chinese musician Zhao Cong, which will create an immersive visual effect with XR technology.

As part of highlights from international shows, the opera Carmen will be screened at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center on Jan 14, and the ballet classic La Traviata on Jan 15. Other performances such as Irish tap dance, Polish orchestral music and Russian ballet will be broadcast online on major Chinese video platforms including Tencent, iQiyi and Youku.

The 22nd edition of "Meet in Beijing" International Arts Festival is supported by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Radio and Television Administration, the Beijing municipal government, and the organizing committee of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. It's organized by China Arts and Entertainment Group and the Beijing municipal bureau of culture and tourism.