ENG-2016 — Page 394

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Recreation, Sport, Culture and the Arts

Major Culture and Arts Events

Hong Kong Arts Festival

The 44th annual Hong Kong Arts Festival consisted of 15 world premieres and 12 Asian premieres, including the festival's own productions: Danz Up, New Stage Series: Chinese Lesson and Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio's Macbeth. Other highlights included the festival opening performance of La Verità by Compagnia Finzi Pasca; Teatro Regio Torino's opera Simon Boccanegra and Requiem by Verdi; the festival finale performance of The Sleeping Beauty by the Mikhailovsky Ballet; Thomanerchor Leipzig and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig's St Matthew Passion; Cantonese opera Li Bai: The Immortal Poet, and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Contemporary Dance Series. The festival's 119 performances and 372 associated outreach and educational events attracted over 150,000 people.

International Arts Carnival

The Leisure and Cultural Services Department's annual International Arts Carnival in July and August opened with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Theater Hikosen from Japan. Some 95,000 people attended the carnival's 330 events, which included puppet musical theatre, physical theatre, clown theatre, interactive theatre, multimedia dance, music and magic.

New Vision Arts Festival

The department's eighth edition of the New Vision Arts Festival continued to showcase innovative cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performances with an Asian focus. Local and overseas artists and groups included the Sasha Waltz & Guests, Akram Khan Company, Soumik Datta, Ryoji Ikeda, Li Liuyi Theatre Studio, Tsai Ming-liang and GayBird. The festival's 140 events attracted an audience of more than 70,000.

Chinese Opera Festival

The department's seventh Chinese Opera Festival featured Cantonese opera, Peking opera and other regional genres. There were also Kunqu opera and Kunqu performances that paid tribute to Tang Xianzu, the great playwright of the Ming dynasty. About 46,000 people attended the festival's 69 events.

Hong Kong Week 2016@Taipei

The fifth Hong Kong Week in Taipei, presented by the Hong Kong-Taiwan Cultural Cooperation Committee, ran from 11 November to 10 December with two exhibitions, 11 performances and 12 extension activities, attracting a total attendance of more than 23,000.

Muse Fest HK

Riding on the success of the first Muse Fest HK held in 2015, the department organised the second Muse Fest HK from 25 June to 10 July 2016 with 'See More' as the theme. It featured more than 100 programmes organised by the department's 14 museums, five cultural venues, four museum-related disciplines, and non-LCSD museums and cultural institutes, attracting more than 320,000 attendees.

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