The Hong Kong Arts Festival 2019

Description

Founded in 1973, the Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) is Asia’s longest-running festival of its kind. The month-long event showcases the work of top international ensembles and artists, as well as local and rising talents, in venues throughout Hong Kong. This year, festival performances will be presented in a plethora of new and unconventional spaces.

The festival encompasses all genres of the performing arts, and stages both performances that show deep respect for roots and traditions, as well as disruptive experiments which seek to energise and renew.

Programme highlights include Gangsters of Hong Kong, a cleverly-plotted, powerful drama about triad gangs; The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, a dynamic, contemporary Chinese translation Shakespeare’s most famous play; Madame White Snake, which reimagines the well known Chinese folk story re-an otherworldly opera; and Nouveau Jazz Weekend, a musical treat that forges new connections between the worlds of jazz, classical, contemporary, electronic and pop music.

This year’s theme, “at every stage”, reflects on the ‘stage’ as both a physical space and a point in time. HKAF’s artistic director, Tisa Ho, explains: “We see performers and creators at different stages of their artistic development, and we see different stages in the progress of a great work. And there are the physical stages in which we bring artists and audiences together.”