The 2014 Arts Festival offered contemporary dance from established international masters along with new wave work from Asia, Scandinavia and Hong Kong itself.
Tag - Hong Kong Arts Festival
The Festival kicked off with two classical ballet companies presenting very different versions of the oldest and most celebrated Romantic ballets in the repertoire: a classic rendering of Giselle and a radically different take on La Sylphide...
Hong Kong Ballet presented a diverse and well-balanced mixed programme in early November, consisting of two premieres and a revival of a major work.
Underpinning all of these familiar devices is the remarkable, intoxicating charisma of this extended family of performers, many of whom have been with the company for 30+ years. They continue to represent, with a comfortable faultless ease, Bausch’s unique cultural legacy...
Local audiences also saw the return of the Lyon Opera Ballet. Their mixed programme consisted of two ballets by Benjamin Millepied, a ballet by Maguy Marin, and best of all, Balanchine’s masterpiece, Concerto Barocco, staged by Nanette Glushak.
Anyone who went to Les Ballets de Monte Carlo’s Le Songe, artistic director Jean-Christophe Maillot’s version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream expecting a family show will have been in for a shock. Packed with graphic sexual imagery from start to finish, this is the kind of production that has small children asking “What are they doing, Mummy?”...
Grosse Fugue by Maguy Marin... Performed with energy by the dancers and received with rapturous applause by some of the audience, this is either genius at work or less fun than watching paint dry, depending on your point of view.
The local audiences warmly welcomed the long-overdue return of the Hamburg Ballet which was appearing for the third time in the festival. For this 40th anniversary festival the Hamburg company brought both a plotless ballet and a narrative ballet by its renowned choreographer, John Neumeier.