In the lead-up to the 52nd Hong Kong Arts Festival — the city’s annual flagship event celebrating new live shows from around the world — Gennady Oreshkin finds out from the organizers and featured artists why collaboration is key to this year’s program.

Jordan Cheng plays the lead in the Hong Kong Arts Festival-produced musical, I Am What I Am, a coming-of-age story about China’s “left-behind” children that also references the Lingnan lion dance. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

T here’s less than a month to go before the 52nd edition of the Hong Kong Arts Festival officially kicks off on Feb 22, with the Bavarian State Opera production of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, though the festival’s multimedia exhibitions, two shows grouped under the title Miwa Matreyek’s World of Animation, open two days earlier. 

This is a special year for Hong Kong’s flagship annual showcase that brings together some of the world’s finest recent stage productions and new commissions premiering at the event. While the festival has consistently featured collaborative projects, involving artists from Hong Kong and elsewhere, cultural exchange seems key to this year’s lineup. 

From left: The creative team includes music composer Leon Ko, director Terence Sin, playwright Cheung Fei-fan and lyricist Chris Shum. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

In terms of novelty, this is the first time local dancer-choreographers have teamed up with their counterparts from the Arab world. From Jérôme Bel — the eponymous show based on the creative practice of the acclaimed French choreographer, created by Enoch Cheng and performed by Dick Wong — to the musical I Am What I Am, which sees a quartet of Hong Kong talents — distinguished stage director Terence Sin, composer Leon Ko, lyricist Chris Shum and playwright Cheung Fei-fan — coming together to raise a toast to the Lingnan lion dance, originally from Foshan in Guangdong province, the series of collaborative projects premiering at the festival demonstrates its capacity for achieving creative synergy of the finest and most diverse kind.

“It took us three, almost four, years to put this special lineup of 45 programs and more than 1,400 artists together,” says the festival’s program director, Grace Lang. She notes that the travel restrictions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic had made it difficult for artists from the Chinese mainland to travel to Hong Kong for the previous four editions of the festival — the reason why showcasing cross-border collaborations between Hong Kong and mainland artists is being considered especially important this year. 

Leung Chung-hang (left) and Mei Mei Mcleod are cast in the lead roles in the Hong Kong Arts Festival-commissioned drama Miss Julie. Adapted from August Strindberg’s 1888 classic play, the new work sees its setting changed from Sweden to Hong Kong in the late ’40s, when the city was a British colony. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Celebrating a Lingnan heritage

The Cantonese-language musical I Am What I Am is a case in point. A festival highlight, the production is based on the 2021 hit animation film with the same title. It tells a story of three “left-behind” teenagers — kids growing up in rural China without the supervision of their parents who have migrated to the cities in search of work.  

Lang calls the production “an important collaboration between artists from the Greater Bay Area”. Renowned lion-dance master Zhao Weibin serves as the lion-dance consultant on the musical. Jordan Cheng, a rising star of the musical theater, plays the lead. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Macao, Cheng embraces both his heritages. 

“A young man’s coming-of-age story is universal,” says the musical’s director, Sin, “but using Lingnan lion dance as the vehicle of his journey adds cultural significance for the Hong Kong audience”.  

The Bavarian State Opera production of Richard Strauss’Ariadne auf Naxos is the opening act of the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2024. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Lang’s fond hope is that young audiences coming to see the musical will be inspired to find out more about the dance heritage it celebrates. 

Lang’s fellow program director at the festival, So Kwok-wan, is excited about Miss Julie, based on Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg’s 1888 classic. “We adapted Strindberg’s play to a historical period in Hong Kong, namely, the late ’40s, thus investigating a part of our own history using that story’s original structure,” So explains. 

The original work was banned in a few countries when it first came out as its theme clashed with the Victorian morals prevailing at the time. Unfolding in a 19th-century Swedish countryside, the play traces the brief yet passionate affair between Countess Julie and her father’s valet, Jean. Its new adaptation, by British-Hong Kong playwright Amy Ng and directed by Tony Wong, reimagines the lead pair as a mixed-race woman — the daughter of a highly placed official in the British colonial government — and her Chinese driver, John. 

From left: Dick Wong plays French dancer Jérôme Bel in the Hong Kong Arts Festival’s eponymous production. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

So aptly calls Miss Julie a pressure cooker of a play. “It’s interesting to take all these ingredients: Post-war Hong Kong, class, politics and racial prejudices, throw them in together and see how they explode.” He adds that the colonial setting of the new adaptation creates “another angle of investigation” into the play’s subject. “Each of the three characters, including the housemaid, is trying to cross the boundaries of their identities.”

Ontroerend Goed, a theater company from Ghent in Belgium, is bringing a double bill of immersive, experimental productions to the festival. Both The Smile Off Your Face and A Game of You admit only one audience at a time. Ahead of the twin productions’ Hong Kong launch on March 1, the company members trained a bunch of local artists who will perform the pieces in Cantonese. 

So seems particularly thrilled about A Game of You. “It’s exactly what its title sounds like. In this experience, the audience will be participating in a game about themselves, guided by skilled actors.”  

Miwa Matreyek’s World of Animation features three multimedia experiences, transporting the audience into whimsical, dreamlike realms. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The Smile Off Your Face, produced by Ontroerend Goed from Ghent in Belgium, is a piece of immersive theater, catering to one audience member at a time. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Meeting of minds

Jérôme Bel is a performance piece designed like a lecture demonstration, in which the character of Bel reflects on his 50 years of triumphs and struggles, both in art and life, in a series of videos. Through multimedia presentations and live performances, the audiences are invited to take a journey inside the mind of a creative genius and get a taste of the ways in which he navigates the complexities of the human condition through his craft. 

In this highly stylized production, Wong as Bel is often found reading Bel’s writings off a digital screen. “I needed someone who can perform as embody Bel without necessarily having to act,” says Cheng, the show’s dramaturge and director. 

He has a note of caution for prospective viewers. “If you expect to see a stereotypical ballet or contemporary dance, you will be disappointed.” However, Cheng adds that he won’t mind if the production fails to please its audiences, as he believes criticism “is what pushes us to reassess our values”.