RECREATION, SPORTS AND THE ARTS
Local groups also had a prominent role in the festival with performances by the City Contemporary Dance Company, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, the Chung Ying Theatre Company and High Noon Productions.
With two major British exhibitions, mime from the United States and Italy, shadow puppet theatre from Taiwan, talks, masterclasses and workshops, the festival provided an entertaining and enriching start to the new decade.
Hong Kong Festival Fringe
Since its founding eight years ago, the Hong Kong Festival Fringe has developed from an annual open arts festival into a successful year-round operation that gives the emerging artists of Hong Kong the opportunity to hone their skills and create new works.
The Festival Fringe 1990, staged for three weeks in January and February, was attended by some 300 000 people.
Manned by a small and dedicated staff and open throughout the year, the Fringe Club provides artists with rent-free venues for performances and exhibitions. Its facilities include a 100-seat theatre, several rehearsal studios, a bar with an exhibition area, a pottery workshop with showroom, a restaurant, a gallery and offices. The Fringe Club arranges performances, exhibitions and classes on a year-round basis. In residence there are the Fringe Theatre Workshop and Mime and Movement Laboratory. An active outreach programme chalked up over 230 shows and special projects during the year.
Urban Council Presentations
The Urban Council invited overseas and local artistes to present a balanced programme of music, opera, drama, dance, film shows and other forms of art in 1990 during which 363 performances were watched by 317 380 people.
Many groups of international standing performed in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. These included orchestral performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra of Bratislava. The centre also featured vocal recitals by Kathleen Battle and Gianfranco Cecchele, instrumental recitals by the Labeque Sisters, Joshua Bell, Rudolf Buchbinder, Robert Taub and Oxana Yablonskaya, and dance performances by the Scottish Ballet, Yolande Snaith and many others.
In addition, local programmes included the Dance Spectacle, a tribute to local dance achievement, featuring the Hong Kong Dance Company, the City Contemporary Dance Company, Zuni Icosahedron and the Hong Kong Ballet. Other art forms presented included the opera Turandot, the musical Cyrano de Bergerac by High Noon Productions and the drama performance Rhinoceros by Bestreben Drama Association.
Hong Kong International Film Festival
The annual Hong Kong International Film Festival has become one of the major non- competitive events in the film world.
The 14th festival, held from April 6 to 12, presented high quality films from all over the world. A varied programme of feature films, animations, short films and video programmes was presented during the 16-day event, including works by film-makers Krzysztof Kieslowski, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Fumio Kamei and Vasily Shukshin.
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