The triumph of individual will emerged as an eerily prescient theme at the recent Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF). Many of the most compelling stories told were solo shows, or productions leaning on the prowess and reputation of a single talent.

After absorbing more than a dozen works over the weeks-long festival, these are some of the most affecting pieces this writer experienced.

Pina unpacked

Cristiana Morganti wrote Jessica and Me in 2014 as an act of reinvention. It was her first solo show after more than 20 years as a soloist with German ballet queen Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. Then in her mid-40s, she feeling it in her limbs — a fact underlined repeatedly in the script, which stung with a new layer of pathos when performed more than a decade later by the Italian dancer, now aged 56, at Hong Kong City Hall. The work’s enduring reputation speaks for its profound deconstruction of the artistic psyche, of the dueling desire for expression, and its inherent narcissism. “You stole that move!” admits Morganti’s inner voice during the music-less introductory set piece. “Much! Too! Fast!” her recorded voice repeatedly admonishes.

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For much of the show, Morganti addresses the audience directly, sharing her fears and foibles, recounting the stigma her body shape evoked as a teenage dancer, and reliving private lessons in how to seductively smoke a cigarette from Bausch herself. Elsewhere, Morganti crouches in distressed dialogue with her alter ego Jessica, whose voice booms from a primitive cassette recorder. “So we can say Pina pushed you to the limit?” she demands, echoing a thousand thoughtless journalists.

Alone and limitless

By contrast, Claire Cunningham’s Songs of the Wayfarer, from the HKAF sister No Limits program, explores the physical barriers of traversing the world on crutches as a metaphor for the mental endurance we all draw on to navigate the journey of life. The UK-based artist repurposed The Box in WestK’s Freespace, climbing over seats in between pre-recorded motivational poems and powerful live renditions of lieder (German art songs) from Gustav Mahler’s song cycle of the same name. “Take your time”, instructed the closing message, projected on the stage floor. While so much physical theater is about making things appear effortless, Cunningham owns the effort, demonstrating the fact that life’s true reward lies in being able to forge one’s way forward at one’s own pace.

As part of the same program, Chinese social media personality Zhao Hongcheng also explored the effect of disability on space and vice versa, framing her powerful solo show Be Seen — presented at Hong Kong City Hall — around the canny conceit of navigating her way to a theater in a wheelchair and preparing to appear onstage in a show not unlike the one she was performing at.

Star power

While other humans may drift on and off the stage, the whimsical physical comedy Bells and Spells is entirely built around the talents and charms of Aurélia Thierrée who, it’s hard to forget, is Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter. Starring in a play written by her mother, Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, the French actor portrays a frivolous kleptomaniac haunted by her bounty, with an increasingly impressive series of circus tricks and stage sleights harking back to a simpler era of theater. This performance at Hong Kong Culture Centre’s Grand Theatre offered an evening of amusing escapism, though one wonders whether such sorcery could have told a more substantial tale.

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There is gravity aplenty in Time. It transcends mere symbolism that the final theater piece Ryuichi Sakamoto worked on is a meditation on the fickleness of moments and memory. While the late Japanese composer’s name may be selling the tickets, in essence it’s another one-man show, with Min Tanaka playing the wizened, cloaked figure dipping in and  out of reveries and drawn from classic Asian literature. The piece unfolds on a starkly symbolical set designed by co-creator Shiro Takatani. Staged at Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts’ Lyric Theater, a large screen hangs behind a shallow but ominous body of water, its haunting visuals casting reflections across the pond in more ways than one. Time, it must be said, moves slowly, yet with patience the piece reveals itself as a poignant, poetic meditation on mortality, meaning, and mankind’s eternal engagement with nature.