Dubai’s inaugural World Tennis League announces full line-up for concert series

Ne-Yo is set to perform in Dubai. (File/ AFP)
Short Url
Updated 02 November 2022
Follow

Dubai’s inaugural World Tennis League announces full line-up for concert series

DUBAI: The full line-up of DJs and performers set to take the stage on the sidelines of the inaugural edition of the World Tennis League, taking place in Dubai this December at the Coca-Cola Arena, has been announced.

To be held from Dec. 19 to 24, the event will feature tennis played by likes of Novak Djokovic and Iga Świątek, after which the arena will transform into a stage and a series of six concerts featuring Tiësto, Wizkid, Deadmau5, Ne-Yo, Mohamed Ramadan and Armin van Buuren will take place.

The World Tennis League is a round robin tournament that sees teams of star players face off in two-set matches. Joining Djokovic and women’s world No. 1 Świątek are reigning Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina and Aussie maverick Nick Kyrgios. The full player roster and team line-ups will be announced on Nov. 6.

Attendees can register now for a 10 percent discount on tickets for the pre-sale at www.coca-cola-arena.com/en/events/World-Tennis-League.


‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance

PARK CITY: As a million Syrians fled their country's devastating civil war in 2015, directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes headed to Turkey where they would meet a young girl who encapsulated the contradictions of this enormous migration.

In Ismir, they met Isra'a, a then-11-year-old girl whose family had left Aleppo as bombs rained down on the city, and who would become the subject of their documentary "One In A Million," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.

For the next ten years, they followed her and her family's travels through Europe, towards Germany and a new life, where the opportunities and the challenges would almost tear her family apart.

The film is by directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes. (Supplied)

There was "something about Isra'a that sort of felt to us like it encapsulated everything about what was happening there," MacInnes told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Friday.

"The obvious vulnerability of her situation, especially as being a child going through this, but that at the same time, she was an agent.

"She wasn't sitting back, waiting for other people to save her. She was trying to fight, make her own way there."

The documentary mixes fly-on-the-wall footage with sit-down interviews that reveal Isra'a's changing relationship with Germany, with her religion, and with her father.

It is this evolution between father and daughter that provides the emotional backbone to the film, and through which tensions play out over their new-found freedoms in Europe -- something her father struggles to adjust to.

Isra'a, who by the end of the film is a married mother living in Germany, said watching her life on film in the Park City theatre was "beautiful."

And having documentarists follow her every step of the way as she grew had its upsides.

"I felt like this was something very special," she told the audience after the screening. "My friends thought I was famous; it made making friends easier and faster."