Font ResizeUNION CITY — About 200 students from James Logan High School will make history next month as members of the first foreign group to perform in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, organizers say.
The Aug. 3 performance will be part of a Chinese television show airing for two hours every morning, leading up to the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, which will run Aug. 8 to 24.
"(The students) are all looking forward to it, starting to get excited," said Brian Holland, president of the Logan Band and Color Guard Boosters. "It'll be one of the highlights that they'll have. It's not often you get the chance to see the Olympics live, let alone perform in them."
Before leaving for Beijing, the band and color guard will perform free "bon voyage" concerts at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the school's pavilion, 1800 H St. Then about 200 students and 50 family members will board flights to China, where they will spend 15 days touring Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai.
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Orchestra, which will include Logan's band and color guard, will be the first non-Chinese group given permission to perform in the square, according to World Projects, organizers of the orchestra.
"We are making history at this event," said Kirk Troen, chief executive of World Projects, in a statement. "This performance will be a treasured memory for all participants."
Logan's band and color guard teams are accustomed to the limelight. In the past
Still, performing at the Olympics will be among the teams' highest honors. Logan is the only high school in the Bay Area, and one of four in the United States, to be invited as part of the "red" orchestra, representing the Americas. A "green" orchestra will represent the Pacific Islands and a "gold" orchestra will represent China.
The Beijing Olympics is giving China the opportunity to showcase itself as a world power, but it's also provided a platform for activists who condemn its human rights record, particularly in Tibet. The Olympic Torch relay, dubbed "Journey of Harmony," turned out to be anything but, with protests in several cities along the route — including San Francisco — earlier this year.
Tiananmen Square itself conjures up images of repression. The site of Mao Zedong's proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, it is best known outside of China for the series of pro-democracy protests held there in 1989 by students, intellectuals and labor activists, hundreds of whom were killed when troops and tanks moved in to crush the demonstrations.
Soon, another group of students will try to carve out a happier moment in the square's history.
