Maguy Marin and Jiří Kylián Bookend City Contemporary Dance Festival

Description

For its fifth edition, the biannual City Contemporary Dance Festival moves to a new home at East Kowloon Cultural Centre to present 18 original works over a nine-day run. 

Topping the bill are two notable visiting companies, with a revival of French dance icon Maguy Marin’s absurd, slow-moving Samuel Beckett-inspired 1981 existential classic May B opening the festival, on 23 October. Also looking back is Armin Hokmi’s Shiraz, a contemporary homage to the avant-garde Shiraz Arts Festival of the 1960s and 70s, set to modern electronic Persian beats. 

City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) takes the honour of closing its own festival with a double bill in its Connected Stage series, pairing a fresh interpretation of Jiří Kylián’s classic Sleepless alongside a brand new work by artistic director Sang Jijia, titled a | ch.

As a quickly emerging regional player, the festival hosts a dedicated showcase for regional talent, the Hotpot East Asia Dance Platform, which presents 14 new works from Japan, South Korea and mainland China over six different programmes. Uniting these works is the theme “Time Fantasy” — a meditation on the fickleness of lived experience.