A cultural feast in dim sum heaven

For the past seven years, the dance, music and theatre programmes at the Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) have given me a valid reason to visit and feast on cultural traditions, both old and new, as well as delightful dim sum.

The festival lasts about five weeks and I usually choose two works that excite me the most and plan my trip around them. In the 42nd annual edition of HKAF, I am especially attracted by the Handspring Puppet Company’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the Baxter Theatre Centre’s “Mies Julie”, both from Cape Town, Africa. Handspring created the world-famous musical “War Horse”, which was adapted into a Hollywood movie.

“We don’t programme our festival by nationality or region,” says Tisa Ho, HKAF’s executive director. “We can’t take credit for going to South Africa and inviting them to come here – both works are already on the international circuit, having performed in Europe and in the case of “Julie”, in the US as well. This suggests that South Africa is enjoying an increasing presence on the international art scene and so it makes sense for us to be working with them.

“I think a lot of people outside Asia are interested in Asian works but we need to have more works on international stages before we can expect the rest of the world to pay more attention. This is why we’re always interested in presenting new local, regional and Asian works – ‘The Asia-Pacific Dance Platform’, for example.”

This year’s “Platform” includes contemporary dance works by Korea’s Insoo Lee, China’s Xie Xin and India’s Sujata Goel, who we witnessed in last year’s “Our Roots Right Now” festival here. 

Ho is enthusiastic about this year’s dance line-up, which features works by seven major choreographers, including Pina Bausch, Trisha Brown, Matthew Bourne and Akram Khan. 

Bausch’s company performs one of her seminal works and her dance-opera adaptation of Gluck’s “Iphigenia in Taurus”. In four performances over three days, audiences can watch three different progarmmes by Trisha Brown Dance Company in which they can see the development of American post-modern dance. Scottish Ballet performs Bourne’s “Highland Fling”, his reinvention of “La Sylphide”. Another revision of classics is Khan’s “iTMOi” (“in the mind of igor”), in which he and his international ensemble of artists “respond” to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”. 

As always, the music and opera programmes are exciting. Gregory Porter, whose “Liquid Spirit” has just been honoured with a Grammy Award for best jazz vocal album, as well as the internationally renowned London Symphony Orchestra will perform and the Savonlinna Opera Festival’s spectacular production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” is likely to be the operatic highlight. 

“At the same time, we’ve commissioned a new chamber opera ‘Before Brabant’ [with music and libretto by Jeffrey Ching], which in a way is a prequel to ‘Lohengrin’,” Ho says. “I love these relationships within the festival.”

For the first time ever, HKAF is commissioning a new English-language play. “FILTH”, short for “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong”, is about expats and penned by Hong Kong playwright Young Jingan. 

“It is after all a bilingual city and this young playwright has a very interesting idea,” Ho explains, adding, “I hope we can continue to do this.

“A wonderful thing about festivals and performances is that there’s an infinite number of possibilities and within our festival we always acknowledge the great masters while simultaneously trying to present new and wacky works.

“The audience is also amazing. Over the past few years, they’ve turned out for performances that we thought were not everybody’s cup of tea. And so this year, we’re pushing the envelope a little further.

“For example, this year we have the National Theatre of China’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the Handspring’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Nowy Teatr’s ‘African Tales by Shakespeare’ in which major characters have been taken out of Shakespearean plays and reworked into a contemporary Polish play about heroes who are marginalised. It lasts more than five hours so it’s not an easy evening at the theatre but it is a wonderful work that pushes us to realise the power and capability of theatre and how it can communicate emotionally, intellectually, viscerally and aesthetically.” 

Advance booking started in early October and well over half of the tickets have already been purchased so it looks likely that HKAF will once again reach a 95-per-cent attendance rate this year. Nevertheless, Ho says that tickets to most programmes are still available.

“I hope that our friends from Thailand will come to relax and enjoy our fantastic programmes,” she says.

 

Beyond  the shopping

 < The 42nd Hong Kong Arts Festival runs from February 18 to March 22. 

< Get tickets at www.urbtix.hk. For more details, visit www.HK.ArtsFestival.org. 

 

The writer wishes to thank Alexia Chow for all assistance.