West Kowloon Performing Arts Presents: "Free Dance 2024" large-scale dance festival returns with great success

Description

The West Kowloon Cultural District's large-scale dance festival "Freedom Dance 2024" (Dance Festival) will be held from November 21 to December 15, 2024 at the West Kowloon Cultural District (West Kowloon) Free Space. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of Free Space, the Performing Arts Office of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (West Kowloon Performing Arts Office) planned and presented avant-garde contemporary dance works by four outstanding choreographers under the theme Re: TIME and SPACE to shock the audience. The inherent concepts of time and space stimulate the public's imagination about the boundaries of time and space. The festival also features a number of local independent artists’ sharing of new works and ideas, workshops and post-performance discussions. Tickets for the Big Box program are now on sale on the ticketing platform Cityline.
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Hong Kong's award-winning dancer Yang Chunjiang opens another masterpiece "Supernatural "Free Space Celestial Paradise"" to kick off the dance festival
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The dance festival will kick off with the world premiere (November 21-24) of the latest work "Free Space Celestial Paradise" by the famous Hong Kong choreographer Yang Chunjiang, commissioned by West Kowloon. Yang Chunjiang is good at using site-specific and new media art to show the possibilities of the body and movement. He has become famous overseas with his multimedia solo dance series "Spirituality - Celestial Paradise" launched more than 20 years ago. He has performed many times in various arts venues in Europe and Asia. Festival Tour. In this new work in collaboration with West Kowloon, Yang Chunjiang once again breaks through the limitations of the body and media, collaborating with new media artists from Taipei and Hong Kong to explore the hidden space and possibilities of the free-space large box, and to display the changes and changes in his body over the past 25 years. The mark of time baptism. The audience will lie half on the ground and watch the dancers fly and dance freely in the air. They will also see the theater from a new perspective and re-understand the big box.

Date and time:
21 to 23 November, 2024 (Thursday to Saturday) 8:00pm
24 November,  2024 (Sunday) 3:00pm
Artist talks after the show on 21 November, 2024
Tickets: HKD 320
Venue: Free Space Big Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024_exhibitionist

Thailand's new choreographer Kornkarkn Rungsawang's work "Dance for All" combines traditional and contemporary elements
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Inspired by Ram kea bon, a traditional Thai god-seeking ceremony with a history of more than 400 years, Thailand's new choreographer Kornkarn Rungsawang combines traditional dance with modern technology to create a new interactive work "Dancing for Sure" that travels through the real, virtual and spiritual worlds. Should" (November 29 to December 1). The work constructs a virtual temple through virtual reality and augmented reality technology, inviting the audience to make wishes to the virtual gods as if they were in the temple; she will act as an intermediary dancer for the audience and the virtual gods, providing new meaning to traditional dance vocabulary. And connect the traditional rituals in people's lives with the current cultural context to create a new experience of common imagination, desire and spirituality.

Date and time:
29-30 November, 2024 (Friday-Saturday) 8:00pm
1 December, 2024 (Sunday) 3:00pm
Program is approximately 65 minutes long without intermission
Audience members are invited to participate in a 15-minute interactive session prior to the performance. (7:45pm/2:45pm)
There will be a post-performance artist talk on 29 November, 2024.
Tickets: HKD 320
Venue: Free Space Big Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024_malibucha

Internationally renowned Greek art master Dimitris Papaioannou's six-hour uncensored documentary video installation "Please Come In" provides a taste of the reality behind daily life.
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Dimitris Papaioannou, the youngest creative director of the Olympic Opening Ceremony (Athens 2004) and one of the most influential artistic masters in Greece today, will bring an uncut documentary of his world-famous 2011 live performance "Come In" installation, and "Behind the Scenes" (December 4-8), which records live events backstage. The six-hour video completely records the live performance of "Come In" in 2011 - a room was set up on the stage, and 30 actors entered and exited in a flowing manner, showing the seemingly similar but different ordinary daily life after each returned home. , under the uncanny choreography of Papaioannou, the performance is like a gradually changing cultural landscape. At the same time, the behind-the-scenes footage "Behind the Scenes", which was shot and edited by Papaioannou himself and lasted for more than an hour, was shown, allowing the audience to break into the back of the stage and get a glimpse of the performers' behind-the-scenes activities after taking off their characters. "Come In" has been performed at many important art festivals such as Athens, Amsterdam, Montpellier, Basel, Dresden, Turin, Rome, and Montreal, and has received great acclaim.

Date and time:
4 - 6 December, 2024 (Wednesday to Friday) 5:00pm - 11:00pm
7 - 8 December, 2024 (Saturday to Sunday) 3:00pm - 9:00pm
Spectators can come and go at will during the opening hours
"Come In": about 6 hours
"Behind the Scenes": about 81 minutes (played on loop)
(Two videos played simultaneously)
Ticket: HKD 100
Venue: Free Space Big Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024_inside

Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger carefully designed the extraordinary ballet "Dance" to reach the climax
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"Dance" (December 13-15), choreographed and performed by Austrian dancer Florentina Holzinger, one of the hottest and most experimental theater creators in Europe today, combines ballet, stunts and black humor to boldly explore the concept of women The true meaning of physical discipline.

Date and time:
13 - 14 December, 2024 (Friday-Saturday) 8:00pm
15 December, 2024 (Sunday) 3:00pm
The program is approximately 140 minutes long without intermission
Artist talks after the show on 13 December, 2024
Tickets: HKD 350
Venue: Free Space Big Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024_tanz?item_list_id=in_content

Free Dance 2024: FIRST Creative Platform: Tieshi Production/TS Crew (Hong Kong) x contact Gonzo (Osaka) "Building Bridges" (stage performance)

The second "FIRST Creation Platform" will present two new commissioned creation stages in "Freedom Dance 2024" and release the latest creative concepts of four groups of independent artists, aiming to explore and continuously develop creative concepts with the potential of local art furniture. . One of the stage performances of new commissioned works is "Building a Bridge" (tentative title) produced by TS Crew (Hong Kong) and contact Gonzo (Osaka), using high-energy, humorous and unique improvisational contact, body movements and sounds as "building materials" , using a football match as a bridge to explore and deconstruct the different aspects of human nature, culture and society highlighted by language barriers and physical collisions. The full production will be performed in 2025.
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Date and time: 23 November, 2024 (Saturday) 2:30pm
Ticket: HKD 100
Venue: Free Space Slim Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024

Free Dance 2024: FIRST Creative Platform: Tan Zhizhuo's "Broken Body" (stage performance)

The second "FIRST Creation Platform" will present two new commissioned creation stages in "Freedom Dance 2024" and release the latest creative concepts of four groups of independent artists, aiming to explore and continuously develop creative concepts with the potential of local art furniture. . One of the stage performances of new commissioned works is "Broken Body" by the new generation dancer Tan Zhizhuo, in which she will dialogue and dance with her avatar. In the AI ​​era, we will communicate with future humans and explore more thoughts and languages ​​about human nature and others.
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Date and time: 24 November, 2024 (Sunday) 2:30pm
Ticket: HKD 100
Venue: Free Space Slim Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024

Free Dance 2024: FIRST Creative Platform

FIRST, launched in 2023, is a platform for the debut of creative concepts. We invite local choreographers to share their latest creative origins and present the preliminary stages of their works. This year there will be two independent artists Yu Meihua and Hu Rixi; and two groups of artist panels Yan Shen and Chen Zhijiang, as well as Chen Weiluo and Sun Lixian, released their creative concepts, bringing everyone a refreshing perspective on dance with cutting-edge ideas.

FIRST is not limited to media forms and encourages unfettered creative practice. For two consecutive days, there were different participants every day. After they presented their concepts, there was a discussion session, inviting the public and the industry to communicate and share. We hope that everyone can jointly imagine the opportunities and possibilities for the sustainable development of the work as early as the embryonic stage.

Date and time: 23 and 24 November, 2024 (Saturday and Sunday) 6:00pm
Tickets: HKD 80
Venue: Free Space Slim Box, West Kowloon Cultural District
Website: https://www.westk.hk/tc/freespacedance2024