Arts of Hong Kong 2021: HKAF 2021 rolls out HKAF-commissioned productions for online viewing

HONG KONG – The 49th Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) has announced the rollout of HKAF-commissioned productions, following rescheduling earlier this year due to unavailability of venues on account of social-distancing restrictions. The programmes will be available for online viewing in May 2021, and will include Jockey Club Local Creative Talents Series Journey to the West Rewind/Women Like Us, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Contemporary Dance Series (CDS) 10th Anniversary Dance On and Off, Put Out the Flame/Hermetic Diode, Elephant in the Room/ Dirty , and The Plague (Cantonese and English Versions).

From the Jockey Club Local Creative Talents Series, Journey to the West Rewind/Women Like Us runs from 14th to 31st May. Journey to the West is an online music theatre is an audacious reinvestigation of the Cantonese opera art form and the eponymous literary classic, while the Cantonese-language online chamber opera Women Like Us is a singing tribute to the literary grand dame Xi Xi and the two protagonists of her beloved short stories  A Girl Like Me and  The Cold.

From 14th to 31st May, the Hong Kong Jockey Club Contemporary Dance Series (CDS) presents Dance On and Off, Put Out the Flame/Hermetic Diode and Elephant in the Room/Dirty. In Dance On and Off, ten dancers who were part of the CDS are invited back to look back on their development as artists through devising new works. Put Out the Flame/Hermetic Diode features three CDS alumni revisiting their starkly different meditations on the limits of expression and understanding in close-knit partnerships. Finally, Elephant in the Room/Dirty questions how social norms prevent communication, in this playful, incisive double bill by dance artists from Hong Kong and mainland China.

Finally, The Plague (Cantonese and English Versions) will be available from 25th to 31st May, with up-and-coming Hong Kong director Chan Tai-yin bringing together an all-female cast in the world premiere of a haunting Cantonese adaptation of Neil Bartlett’s The Plague, itself an adaptation of Albert Camus’s tour de force La Peste. Commissioned and produced by the HKAF, the work examines how, when faced with an unimaginable situation, people respond in their own way—some heroically, others selflessly, more still selfishly. For licensing reasons, these two productions will be available for streaming in Hong Kong only. Both programmes provide English and Chinese subtitles.

Booking for the online programmes can be made on the Festival website here

The 49th Hong Kong Arts Festival ran from 27th February to 4th April 2021.