ENG-2017 — Page 388

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Recreation, Sport, Culture and the Arts

Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra

The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra organised the Hong Kong International Youth Chinese Music Festival and the International Conducting Competition for Chinese Music. It toured six Mainland cities to celebrate the HKSAR's 20th anniversary.

Hong Kong Dance Company

The Hong Kong Dance Company promotes Chinese dance of Hong Kong character. The company's major programmes in 2017 were L'Amour Immortel and Lady White of West Lake, and it also toured London, Beijing and Guangzhou.

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is recognised as Asia's foremost classical orchestra, presenting more than 150 concerts every year featuring international and local conductors and soloists, offering free shows including the popular outdoor Symphony Under The Stars and organising educational programmes for the young. In 2017, the orchestra performed Part 3 of Wagner's four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung - Siegfried. It also toured Seoul, Osaka, Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney between April and May, and was re-invited to perform in the Beijing Music Festival in October, attracting tens of thousands of concertgoers overseas.

Hong Kong Repertory Theatre

The company seeks to develop creative and diverse theatrical productions of Chinese and western works and local originals. Its 40th anniversary was celebrated in 2017. Highlights included the Broadway musical Scrooge and the local musical Field of Dreams. The company toured Mainland cities, where Field of Dreams won the Most Popular Musical of the Year and Top 10 Best Productions at the Beijing News Drama Awards.

Hong Kong Sinfonietta

One of Hong Kong's leading symphony orchestras, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta performed at festivals in France, Germany, Poland and Portugal in 2017 and premiered a number of new works by local and overseas composers, including a work by Thomas Larcher that was co- commissioned with five other European orchestras. The orchestra's First Hong Kong International Conducting Competition attracted 310 applications from 49 countries and regions.

Zuni Icosahedron

Zuni Icosahedron presented the fifth edition of the Architecture is Art Festival, during which a new theatre work, The Architecture of the City, was presented, and launched a Freespace Tech Lab that put together theatrical creations and applied technology for experimentation and educational purposes. The company also organised the premier Hong Kong Belt-Road City-to- City Cultural Exchange Conference 2017 and conducted a new edition of One Table Two Chairs, in which 12 performing arts masters from various Belt and Road cities as well as more than 20 young Eurasian artists were invited to take part.

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