In the Show – 8th November 2011
The World Cultures Festival is on right now and runs until 20th November. This year, the topic is “Enchanting Arts of Asia”. One of the highlights last Friday and Saturday was the Legend Lin Dance Theatre of Taiwan, and “Song of Pensive Beholding”. The title of the Legend Lin Dance Theatre work refers to the act of looking inward to our hearts, and reflecting what we see outwardly. In form, it’s a mythical story about the soul of nature.
Last Sunday, carnival artists Paul McLaren and Sharon George from the UK, were takng part in a parade on Tsim Sha Tsui’s Avenue of Stars and in the Mong Kok Pedestrian district. Their giant puppet, made of metal wires and plastic sheets was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Sunday’s event was a prelude to the Standard Chartered Arts in the Park Mardi Gras 2011, to be held next weekend in Victoria Park. It’s organized by the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation with the support of the Standard Chartered Bank. It’s part of an annual 6-month youth arts programme.
In our Arts Diary, there’s still plenty coming up in the World Cultures Festival including “Celestial Songs”, “Splendour of Korea”, the Shanghai Yue Ju Opera House, and dancer Akram Khan. And, through this week, the Hong Kong Dance Company is presenting “Two Swallows, Ode to Wu Guanzhong” based on the paintings of the late master. In visual art, at the Sundaram Tagore gallery, there’s another touch of Asian art in the work of Korean artist Kim Joon. In his latest series Kim focuses on ideas of fragility, seduction and imperfection, using 3D computer graphics to create landscapes of porcelain-like human bodies tattooed in brand imagery.
“Tower Heist” is about what happens when a group of workers in a luxury residential building decide to steal their money back from a Bernie Madoff type con-man who lives in the penthouse of their building and has swindled them out of their life savings. It was originally planned by star Eddie Murphy to be an all-black “Oceans Eleven”, but became more multicultural as filming went on. It now also stars Ben Stiller, Michael Pena and Alan Alda among others. Gary Pollard tells us more.
At the end of last month, a man some consider the world’s greatest violinist came to Hong Kong to perform. Itzhak Perlman has been called a superstar of the violin, and “the king of fiddlers”. We spoke to him while he was here.
