The ŻiguŻajg international arts festival for children and young people, starts today and continues until November 26. It features a trove of over 150 performances and workshops at various venues by critically acclaimed international and national companies. Details are available at www.ziguzajg.org. Tickets may be purchased online or from St James Cavalier’s box office (tel. 2122 3200). The following are a few highlights of the programme.

Parade and the Velvet Gentlemen

Photo: Reno Rapa

This show celebrates the 100th anniversary of the ballet Parade, a 20th-century masterpiece featuring Erik Satie’s music, which was premiered in 1917 by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris. This new version revisits the ballet on an interdisciplinary platform, embellishing the choreography with stop-motion animation, puppetry and projection dancing. The performance includes other works by Satie, known by his contemporaries as ‘the velvet gentleman’. It features some of his masterpieces for the piano, such as Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes as well as works prefiguring the minimalism of Steve Reich and the incidental music of John Cage.

Performances: Tomorrow at 6.30pm and Sunday at 11.30am, at the Catholic Institute, Floriana. (Suitable for children aged 10+. Duration: 40 minutes. Language: English)

Opera Antagonisti

A good introduction to the world of opera for the young and the young at heart, this performance features the Malta Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, blustering buffoons and three of opera’s most notorious villans – Otello’s Jago, Tosca’s Scarpia and Don Giovanni.

Opera Antagonisti will be performed tomorrow at 6.30pm, at Don Bosco Theatre, Victoria. (Suitable for children aged 7+. Duration: 60 minutes. Language: English)