Arts Festival highlights postmodern remake of western classics

A line-up of western literary classics with slightly modern or even postmodern takes will be the core of this year’s Macao Arts Festival (FAM24), as announced at a press briefing yesterday.

The line-up includes some of the most popular or renowned western works, such as The Ugly Duckling and The Jungle Book. A number of external performance groups will showcase these productions in Macau from May 3 to June 7.

Director of Culture Deland Leong disclosed that this year’s festival is expected to cost about MOP24.9 million, MOP2.9 million more than last year. When asked to explain the increase, she said that it was caused by a higher number of external performers than the previous edition. Nonetheless, she said, the budget is similar in size to the 2019 festival budget.

She elaborated that, in the previous festival, it was more difficult to secure shows by external performers because it was so soon after the lifting of disease control restrictions. Despite this year’s festival having 10 external performance groups, Leong said the ratio of local to external performers is about 50:50.

During her speech, Leong said this year’s slightly modern take is mostly based on her bureau’s belief that “innovation is vital to art and originates from various creative ideas that boldly break through boundaries.” She hopes that this year’s program will be able to inspire the public “to reflect on their future through the vicissitudes of life.”

This year’s festival will kick off with the dance theatre production Jungle Book, reimagined by legendary British dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, an insightful adaptation of the classic book by Literature Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling.

Featuring dancers who portray animality with movement and ingenious animation, the production relates to the human need to connect with others and conveys the importance of universal harmony.

For the curtain-closer, Portuguese pop rock band Capitão Fausto will share the limelight with David Huang, an expert in melding Western and Asian flavors, jointly creating wonderful moments of Sino-Portuguese cultural exchange with their distinctive music and continuing Macau’s centuries-old tradition of fostering Sino-Western cultural contact and integration in a show titled Sino-Portuguese Concert.

Ballet lovers, meanwhile, will be delighted by a variety of dance and theatre performances catering to their tastes. In the contemporary ballet Sleeping Beauty, Spanish National Dance Award winner Marcos Morau is teaming up with the Lyon Opera Ballet to take the audience into the otherworldly space of the sleeping princess. The Three Brothers, presented by Portuguese art troupe My Own Name, depicts family relationships and invites the audience to probe human feelings by presenting the friction and struggles among brothers on the stage.

More postmodern adaptations include circus theatre Duck Pond, inspired by Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ugly Duckling, and presented by Circa Contemporary Circus from Brisbane, Australia, with their stunning techniques. Meanwhile, Frankenstein/Creatures is an adaptation presented by Space for Acting in collaboration with Japan-based Theatre Moments, which will offer a time-traversing vision of the past, present and future at the Dom Pedro V Theatre.

Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth, the literary work derived from the history of the namesake Scottish King, will be transformed as Macbettu, an adaptation by Italian director Alessandro Serra that boldly recreates the classic with an all-male cast, rendering breathtaking scenes with martial physicality.

Eastern arts lovers will be well served with the Cantonese opera Under the Pagoda Tree, presented by Zhen Hua Sing Cantonese Opera Association, which tells an immortal love story of utmost sincerity and soul-stirring beauty. Kun opera curation The Chairs is an adaptation of the play of the same name created by the great playwright Eugène Ionesco in 1952.

Local artists will showcase their capabilities in Anamnesis no.: XXXX, Impression of Iec Long and A Star is Arriving, among other shows. The former retells Equus, a play by British playwright Peter Shaffer. The middle aims at reconstructing the times when Macau shone in firecrackers manufacturing. The latter is the annual favorite and blockbuster drama performed in Patuá, Macau’s unique creole.

Box offices will open at 10 a.m., March 23, at all Macau Ticketing Network channels.