Arts | Fringe Festival to kick off on January 12

“Art Festivals in the Cities 2.0”: Curators of performing arts events are invited to share experiences

Themed “Treasure Hunting”, the 17th Macau City Fringe Festival will be held from January 12 to 21.

The new edition of the festival will feature a total of 23 programs, as well as 10 activities including workshops, talks and art critique.

The event was introduced yesterday during a press conference promoted by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), who is the organizer of the event.

The festival will be held across venues such as Senado Square, Jorge Álvares Square, the Ruins of St. Paul’s, Hac Sa Beach and the Old Court Building.

One focus of this edition is “Baby Theatres,” which are specially designed for newborn babies and toddlers. The festival brings “Interactive Talk: Know more about Theatre for Babies,” a seminar presented by Polyglot Theatre from Australia, to broaden participants’ imagination with regards to the concept of theaters for babies. Sue Giles, artistic director of Polyglot Theatre from Australia, will be conducting the discussion.

The Polyglot Theatre will also host a “Creative Production Workshop on Theatre for Babies”, where participants can make their own props and explore ways to use the body and facial expressions in order to give babies a perceptual experience.

Hong Kong dance group Unlock Dancing Plaza, a recurring winner at the Hong Kong Dance Awards, joins hands with the Japanese Namstrops to present three different programs in this edition of the festival.

This edition of the Fringe Festival also includes Fringe Reviews, where art critics hailing from different regions, who have varied backgrounds and experiences, will offer their different points of view on the Fringe Festival to the public.

This year, the Fringe Intelligence Division is specially established to train Fringe reporters who, under the guidance of instructors from Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan, will be able to learn about the different methods of cultural and art production and explore the possibility of creating local media dedicated to arts and culture.

This edition of the festival will continue to hold “Art Festivals in the Cities 2.0”, inviting curators of performing arts events from all over the world to share experiences on local festivals and the cultural environment in their hometowns.

The 10-day long Fringe Festival includes several other shows: “Jin-Tang,” the name of Taiwanese creator Ma Wei Yuan’s grandfather, lets the audience take a peek at the most intimate anatomy of an individual’s life experiences through body language and instant synthetic images; the show “Idiot – Syncrasy,” presented by Igor and Moreno from the United Kingdom, who believe they can change the world by presenting a performance, uses rhythmic body movements and common elements of two ethnic dances to express a yearning for the purest human nature; and “My Old Man is a Bus Driver”, presented by the Dream Theater Association, which takes the audience on a two-hour drive with a retired bus driver, wandering around areas of Macau that have likely been forgotten.

Other programs include “The Auction of Love Stories,” a performance inviting the public to submit items and love stories for auction, allowing the audience to give each one a value; “Niyaro: Yearning for Homeland”, which showcases the recognition of identity buried deep within each person through chanting, dancing and ritual ceremonies held at Hac Sa Beach; “You Can Sleep Here”, which converts streets into beds and invites the public to gather in a mysterious place (known as abandoned public places), thereby tearing down the barriers between private and public spaces; and “Bear with Us,” where three giant bears stroll around the city.

Keng Yeong Chi Kin, vice-president of the IC, told the media that the budget for this edition of the festival is MOP2.9 million, roughly the same as the previous edition. JZ