Freespace Jazz Fest, Chinese Opera, Creative Tomorrow and more at WKCDA!

Freespace Jazz Fest returns this October – with five days of non-stop great sounds on five stages around Freespace, the Art Park and Hong Kong’s new venue Wonderland.

At Wonderland – one of two large outdoor stages – featured artists including Eugene Pao, Joyce Cheung, Daniel Chu, Patrick Lui Jazz Orchestra present individual programmes with new and original sounds. On the second outdoor stage, the Waterfront Lawn, local and Hong Kong-based musicians from South America and Africa present an exciting free programme of sounds from around the world showcasing the city’s multicultural makeup. The festival also includes free film screenings and an arts and crafts market on the Great Lawn, as well as a variety of fun activities for parents and kids.

Headline acts in the Box will fully utilise the venue’s L-ISA (Immersive Sound Art), media server, tracking and projection technologies: Hong Kong jazz legend Ted Lo presents a tribute to great contemporary jazz pianist Chick Corea; Tsui Chin-hung and Bowen Li each bring a new conceptual concert experience to the stage; and percussionist Anna Fan curates performances with theatrical elements specially designed for young jazz audiences. In The Room, the Experimental Lab offers an avant-garde musical experience with local musicians and new media artists collaborating and improvising live online respectively with artists from Berlin, Zurich, Montreal and Seoul. Local bands will also take turns playing evening shows at Lau Bak Livehouse.

The Programme is part of “Creative Tomorrow” exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club.

Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Black Box Chinese Opera Festival 2022

From 14 October to 3 December 2022, the Xiqu Centre’s Black Box Chinese Opera Festival returns for the fifth year with four productions – including two original new works. Combining contemporary aesthetics, innovative staging and state of the art technologies, the performances offer new perspectives on Chinese opera, showcasing the talent of local artists and the vitality of the heritage art form.

This year’s programme includes two new Xiqu Centre productions of experimental Cantonese opera: Asura Judgement – Solo Performance, a uniquely demanding one-man adaptation of Law Ka-ying’s Rashomon-inspired ensemble work (2021), written, directed and performed by Law himself, and The Imperial Decree, a thought-provoking original drama about fate and freewill by award-winning duo Keith Lai and Janet Wong.

The Xiqu Centre’s acclaimed original productions Experimental Cantonese Opera Farewell My Concubine (New Adaptation) and Wenguang Explores the Valley also return to the stage, this time offering audiences a new audio-visual experience at The Box in Freespace, Hong Kong’s largest black-box theatre.

Experimental Solo Cantonese Opera “The Asura Judgement”. Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Experimental Cantonese Opera “The Imperial Decree” (Preview). Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Future of Performance: Bright Day

In November 2022, Freespace will present Bright Day, the second creation from the Future of Performance series. This experimental participatory experience will invite the audience to be central participants in a co-created waking dream. Over a period of a week, trans-disciplinary artist Chan Kwun-fee and sound artists Fiona Lee and AK Kan collaborate with audience-participants on a two-part exploratory journey that delves into the city’s collective unconscious.

The Programme is part of “Creative Tomorrow” exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club.

Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Phygital D

This autumn from 8 September to 9 October 2022, Freespace had presented a programme of performances and multimedia installations that blended dance, live physical performance, film, motion capture and virtual reality experiences. Showcasing multimedia movement artists from Hong Kong and Asia, the programme featured new creations that transport the audience through a variety of physical and virtual dance worlds.

In Phygital D, avant-garde Japanese artist Hiroaki Umeda presented the full-length performance indivisible substance – the final iteration of the work-in-progress virtual experience presented by Freespace in 2020 and 2021, along with three related installation works. City Contemporary Dance Company’s Zelia ZZ Tan invited the audience to be part of an immersive motion-captured dance experience with real and virtual performers. Hong Kong film director Tsang Tsui-shan captured the intimate creative world of dance duo Ix Wong Thien-pau (Malaysia) and Aaron Khek Ah-hock (Singapore) through a VR installation experience. Chinese artist Lu Yang, whose high-energy, anime-inspired work has attracted much attention in the contemporary new media art world, premiered a real-time collaboration between dancers and virtual avatars in Hong Kong and Sydney. Hong Kong artist Chan Wai-lok redefined dance and performance through an interactive digital journey.

The Programme is part of “Creative Tomorrow” exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club.

Phygital D: Zelia ZZ Tan – Accelerating Dimension. Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

The Impossible Trial – A Musical

The Impossible Trial – commissioned by Freespace, co-presented and co-produced with Hong Kong Repertory Theatre – had its world premiere at the Grand Theatre of Xiqu Centre from 9 to 25 September 2022. The three-hour original Cantonese musical production told the amazing story of Guangdong’s most prominent advocate Fong Tong Geng. It brought together Hong Kong’s top creative minds and performers, with music by Leon Ko, lyrics by Chris Shum, script by Cheung Fei Fan, and direction by Fong Chun Kit.

The Impossible Trial – a Musical. Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

The Impossible Trial – a Musical. Courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Stay tuned with us for more exciting and creative West Kowloon Performing Arts Programmes!

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