The 49th Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF), the city’s annual international celebration of the arts and culture, opened on 27 February. The Hong Kong Jockey Club is pleased to provide it with funding support, as it has done for nearly half a century. In view of the pandemic, the funding this year is enabling the HKAF to bring a wide variety of outstanding performances and educational programmes online.
As a long-term partner of the HKAF, the Club has once again supported the festival’s opening performance. This year’s performance, Music About China, presented by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, featured a wide-ranging performance of Chinese music.
Since 2008, the Club has supported three main pillar programmes under The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series, which brings some of the world’s leading performances to Hong Kong. This year’s series features a concert by the Wiener Symphoniker from Vienna conducted by its new music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada; the award-winning operas Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen, both performed byNational Theatre Brno; and a new recording of Matthew Bourne’s double Olivier Award-winning stage production The Red Shoes, a ballet film which is being shown in Hong Kong for the first time.
Other exciting performances and associated events funded by the Club include:
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Contemporary Dance Series, which promotes local talent by featuring young dancers and choreographers and their innovative dance works. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the series is presenting five programmes, including Dance On and Off, which offers a stage for ten past participants to demonstrate their talent through the multifaceted dance works they created.
The Jockey Club Local Creative Talents Series, which supports local artists. A double-bill of chamber operas, Journey to the West Rewind and Women Like Us, are being presented in Chinese and Western operatic formats respectively. Also under the series is Yat-sen (tentative title). Presented as a bare-stage preview, it is set to be the highlight musical of the HKAF 2022.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Student Matinee Programme will feature a free online performance, Igor Moiseyev Ballet Special, which is the festival finale. It also offers other free online educational activities for students. As in previous years, these free programmes reflect the Club’s support for making the arts accessible to people of different backgrounds and ages.
More details of all these events are available at www.hk.artsfestival.org/en/.