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RECREATION AND THE ARTS
and 'Ancestral Abandon', featuring new original dance works by Founder-Director Willy Tsao, Artistic Director Helen Lai, and other guest choreographers from Hong Kong, Japan, United States, and Korea. The company also took part in the prestigious International Society of Contemporary Music's World Music Days and the 12th Festival of Asian Arts in October, and staged another new dance production 'Alive' at the City Hall in December.
Outside Hong Kong, it continued its role as the city's cultural ambassador by taking part in the first Guangzhou International Dance Festival, and toured Shenzhen in July.
The company's Dance Education Unit was set up in September to organise a wide range of educational dance activities, including dance performances, classes, workshops, and lectures in primary and secondary schools, and private dance schools on a year round basis. Its own dance school at its headquarters in Wong Tai Sin continued to attract many dance enthusiasts who enrolled as students.
The company gave 75 performances at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, City Hall, Academy for Performing Arts, performing venues in the New Territories, community festivals, and school halls.
Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, offering professional training in the disciplines of dance, drama, music and technical arts, held its second graduation in July for 89 graduates, with the Governor, Sir David Wilson, President of the academy, conducting the ceremony.
The School of Dance has streams of classical ballet, Chinese dance and modern dance. The May graduation dance performance included a work in the style of each of the three streams. The success of the first two years of the International Festival of Dance Academies (IFDA) as a colourful series of dance programmes and an excellent format for cross- cultural learning and exchange had encouraged the academy to make it an annual event. The Third IFDA was held in conjunction with the Third Hong Kong International Dance Conference from July 18 to 22, with over 200 participants.
Productions by the School of Drama are at present in Cantonese. The list of plays publicly performed in the academic year 1987-8 included: Edmond Rostand's 'Cyrano de Bergerac', Shakespeare's 'Comedy of Errors', Chekov's 'Three Sisters', Neil Simon's 'Brighton Beach Memoirs', together with five drama-directing major student produc- tions, John Pielmeier's 'Agnes of God', Peter Shaffer's 'Five Finger Exercise', Alan Ayckbourn's 'Just Between Ourselves' and two original musicals, 'Life in Hong Kong' and 'Curtain-Up' – by the academy students.
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The School of Music teaches all branches of music in the international Western style as well as Chinese music. It presented 170 public performances in the past academic year, including a fully-staged opera 'first' in Hong Kong, Mozart's 'The Magic Flute', and Mendelssohn's famous 'Oratorio Elijah'.
The School of Technical Arts provides the production services costume, design, lighting, properties, scenery, sound and all that goes into 'stage management' - to the above three schools. Together with the developing Department of Television, the school offers an up-to-date training ground which is unique in Asia.
The academy received a total of 1 057 admission applications. After extensive selective procedures, 103 full-time students were enrolled in the four schools for the academic year 1988-9. Full-time, one-year postgraduate Advanced Diploma Courses, were also offered for the first time, with six successful candidates out of the 18 applicants.