Welcome once again to the biennial New Vision Arts Festival! This year's exhilarating line-up showcases the Festival's role as a creative platform, where artistic genres and cultural insights converge and energise innovation, bringing a new viewing experience to the audience.
Opening the Festival is dance opera Matsukaze, a remarkable crossoverbetween world-renowned German choreographer Sasha Waltz, noted for her interdisciplinary collaborations, and eminent Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. The masterpiece weaves elements of Noh drama, Western opera and contemporary dance into a startlingly original theatrical encounter. The closing programme, Until the Lions, is the latest work by celebrated choreographer Akram Khan, heralding an unsung heroine in the ancient Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata. The powerful and mystical production stunned the dance world earlier this year at the London Roundhouse and is set to make an equally dramatic impression in its Asian première, commissioned by the Festival.
Li Liuyi, one of China's most influential theatre directors, calls on Chinese philosophy and traditional opera to radically redraw the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound as a comedy. Japan's Ryoji Ikeda, hailed as "the master of minimalist electronica", integrates art and science in superposition as he reaches into the world of quantum physics to try to uncover truths about nature. In King of Ghosts, composer and "British sarod maestro" Soumik Datta renders Satyajit Ray's classic movie Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne anew with his original score, played live along with the film. In addition, France's Ensemble intercontemporain share their distinctive take on music of the past and present century in the group's long-awaited Hong Kong début.
Local productions show the diversity of avant-garde work on-going among Hong Kong's creative community. A Concise History of Future illustrates the influence of British and French new writing on director Yan Pat-to, becoming the first play written by a Chinese playwright to be selected by Berliner Festspiele Theatertreffen Stückemarkt this year. Meanwhile, Utopia, momentarily by Susie Au, Vicky Fung and Chow Yiu-fai, One Zero by GayBird and Tsai Ming-liang, and Zuni Icosahedron's Wittgenstein fuse sound and image to pioneer boundary-breaking multimedia collaborations, each with its singular niche and all highly anticipated.
ArtSnap, a mini-festival within a festival, returns with an array of dynamic performances over two weekends, providing fringe and experimental artistic endeavours that utilise every corner of the Kwai Tsing Theatre building and beyond.
A host of inspiring extension activities also await, including exhibitions, an arts salon series, masterclasses, a workshop, pre-performance talks and meet-the-artist sessions. We look forward to you joining us at the Festival!
Betty Au
Senior Manager (Festival)
Leisure and Cultural Services Department
