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Hong Kong's Festival of Asian Arts: A Unique Festival Seeks Its Identity
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11483 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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10 / 1986 |
2,388 Words |
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John Thompson
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As the mid-October date of Hong Kong's Festival of Asian Arts approaches, the local press again asks, "What is the theme of this year's festival?" (They want a headline?) "What distinguishes it from previous years?" (Perhaps a brief, snappy article?) Can one in fact tie together, other than simply as Asian, groups participating in this year's festival, such as the Shanghai Ballet, Muslim religious singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of Pakistan, a folk music group from the Thailand-Laotian border, and the Asiabeat jazz band from Malaysia?
The Festival of Asian Arts has taken place every October since 1976, but only in the past few years has it emerged as a festival of "arts performances" rather than "culture shows." According to this somewhat arbitrary terminology, the former refers to performances which are either purely traditional and unchanged, or are modified to appeal to the more modern instincts of the same peoples who created the traditions; the latter refers to shows in which the arts have been rearranged for persons outside the culture that produced the original. This usually means foreign audiences but may also include urban audiences of the same country, which are often divorced from their rural origins: here the distinctions may become very hazy.
The Festival of Asian Arts originated as, and continues to be, the showpiece of the Hong Kong Urban Council, the British crown colony's version of a municipal authority. Half of the members are elected, the other half are appointed by the governor. When the colonial government granted the Urban Council financial autonomy in 1973, the Council immediately began a major effort to end Hong Kong's reputation as a cultural desert. Today the great majority of overseas performing groups coming to this "capitalist paradise" are still sponsored by the Urban Council. The Council operates the main performing venues, including those at the City Hall (though the new Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts now has better facilities), and it will run the Hong Kong Cultural Center (which includes the 2,250-seat Concert Hall, 1,860-seat Lyric Theatre, and 400-seat Studio Theatre) when it opens in 1989. The Council directly operates four performing companies: the Hong Kong Dance Company (which does Chinese dance), the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Hong Kong Repertory Theater, and the Hong Kong Chorus. It is a major contributor to the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the largely Western-arts-oriented Hong Kong Arts Festival. Hong Kong is very much a city of festivals, and the Urban Council presents three of them: the International Film Festival in spring, a youth arts festival in the summer, and the Festival of Asian Arts in the autumn. Recently the Council announced that the October 1987 festival would be a local one, while an especially grand World Festival is planned for the opening of the Cultural Center in October 1989.
The Festival of Asian Arts is seen as underlining Hong Kong's important position in Asia. Urban Council statements about the purpose of the festival have mentioned both the encouragement of the arts of Asia and the promotion of regional understanding. This was originally carried out by inviting other regional governments to participate. Almost all nominations were accepted and the seventeen-day festival was averaging fifteen overseas groups a year by 1980-81. But a problem of variety arose. Many governments, while happy to support performances by private groups if requested to do so, must officially recommend their own companies, which also represent the countries at less frequent international events where it makes more sense to present
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