It's all part of the Hong Kong story

Updated: 2016-08-19 11:17

(China Daily USA)

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 It's all part of the Hong Kong story

Tisa Ho believes that Hong Kong is the right place for innovation with real curiosity and openness and a deep understanding of the traditions. Roy Liu / China Daily

The 43-year-old Hong Kong Arts Festival plays a critical role in fostering the city's promotion of art and sustaining its rich cultural life, Executive Director Tisa Ho tells Sophie He.

The Hong Kong Arts Festival - seen as the epitome of the city's performing arts - plays an indispensable role in helping a city like Hong Kong meet its aspirations and sustain its rich cultural life, says Executive Director Tisa Ho.

"And, for people who are really interested in the arts, I think we provide real stimulation and impetus for both the audience and artists. I'd like to think that the Hong Kong Arts Festival is part of the Hong Kong story, and that we all grow together, we all contribute to the growth," she tells China Daily in an interview, stressing this is the significance of the work of the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

The festival, launched in 1973, is one of Asia's largest and most significant festivals. It's held in February and March every year, about 10 days after the Spring Festival, and goes on for about five weeks.

The gala event features some 120 performances, held mostly indoors and ranging from grand opera to world music, from jazz to classical, from great theater to funky one-man shows, with an enormous variety in scale and scope.

Sometimes, large scale work will be done somewhere else, like in large parks, according to Ho.

"We'll build the tents in the park and everything, so maybe another 30 shows and 30,000 more people in the audience."

Ho is proud of the festival's high quality work, so its priority is always quality. The festival likes to work with great classics because in this environment, there aren't major houses presenting the great classics all year round, so the festival wants to add value to the environment by presenting the great classics, she says.

"At the same time, we also want to do work that's off today, that is brand new work, so we take tradition and we take temporary work in equal balance. There's a lot of balancing and joggling at the festival."

The festival has a very strong team in programming, says Ho, explaining that it always starts by finding the most fantastic performances and performers available.

"When we get the big names who people know, it's like a real festival celebration event, and it's equally wonderful if we can get the artists we believe in and present them before they turn very famous."

One example is that, last year, the festival presented a young South Korean pianist who won the gold medal in the Chopin Piano Competition six months later.

For HK audiences

And, the festival is always watching what the artists are doing and where they have been performing, how the reviews are. If possible, it'll send someone from its programming team to go and see their performances.

Apart from quality, the festival must bear in mind it should be relevant to and of interest to Hong Kong. So, it tailor-makes the performances for Hong Kong, for Hong Kong audiences who include local artists, says Ho.

According to Ho, the arts festival audience has been getting bigger in the past five years, although not significantly, partly because it has not increased its attractions significantly.

"We're selling roughly 95 percent of all our tickets and, for arts, it's a very high proportion. We also want to undertake some adventurous work, so it's not all very known and very easy work - we want to challenge the audience and challenge the artists a little bit," says Ho, adding that it's to strike a balance between the artistic leadership and the interests of the audience.

Ho stresses that the festival will not set a percentage target with regard to performances from certain countries or a proportion for certain types of performances. It really depends on the project.

"If we find any great project, I don't ever want the festival to say, oh dear we have to present this thing and we don't really believe in it and it's not very good. But, this is a category and we need to fill this category."

Currently, a significant portion of the Arts Festival's revenue comes from ticket sales - close to 40 percent, which is very high even by international standards, according to Ho.

Meanwhile, the government has been, until this year, giving the festival about 30 percent of its revenue, but that funding has been cut for the coming year, so it's going to rely very much on sponsorships and donations more than before.

Ho believes Hong Kong is a very good place and a "terrible" place in terms of nurturing young artists. The "terrible" part is something that everybody faces all the time - there's not enough space.

Sense of dynamism

"I see young artists working elsewhere in empty factories, warehouses, those places don't exist in Hong Kong, and everywhere you go, because there are regulations concerning health and safety, and fire escape, there're some really funky places we've seen that would be great fun to do something there. Then, we need to go through all the processes and, sometimes, it's just not possible because the fire escape is not wide enough. In that sense, Hong Kong is a terrible place, really challenging."

What's good though, she believes, is the sense of dynamism, curiosity and boldness that prevails. Artists are willing to try anything, and audiences are willing to try most of that, so that they can communicate. There's real curiosity and openness and, very often, it's based on very deep understanding of the tradition, so it's a great place for innovation.

Ho recalls that several years ago, the festival began producing its own work. Besides inviting work and artists, it created its own productions from scratch. Some of the works have been very successful, some have re-runs, some even found their way to the Chinese mainland and overseas.

Going forward, Ho sees this something of great value that should be added to the arts community.

"These fantastic art works in Hong Kong deserve to be seen by a bigger public audience. For instance, we've done dance pieces this year, break dance, very Hong Kong, very positive, the dancers are so great. There are so many venues on the Chinese mainland, and I hope they can perform in a good number of those venues. So, this is a direction I would like to develop."

Contact the writer at sophiehe@chinadailyhk.com

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