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Recreation, Sport, Culture and the Arts
Culture and Arts Presentations
The Leisure and Cultural Services Department presents quality cultural programmes throughout the year. In 2017, more than 477,000 people attended 990 performances featuring local and visiting artists and arts groups. Visiting musicians and groups included Renée Fleming, Ute Lemper, Daniil Trifonov, Rafał Blechacz, the China National Traditional Orchestra, the Philharmonia Quartett Berlin and Antonio Sanchez with Migration Band. Visiting dance groups included Nederlands Dans Theater 1, Alonzo King Lines Ballet from the United States, Compañía Eva Yerbabuena from Spain and the National Ballet of China. Visiting multi-arts programmes included Hallo by Zimmermann and de Perrot from Switzerland. A new thematic series, From Puppets to Humans, featured two visiting programmes: Clowns' Houses by Germany's Merlin Puppet Theatre and Cell, co-produced by Smoking Apples and Dogfish from the UK.
Two special events were organised to mark the HKSAR's 20th anniversary: the International Military Tattoo with a two-day carnival and concerts by the Berliner Philharmoniker with live relays at three sites.
To support emerging local artists, performance platforms were created in these series: Our Music Talents, City Hall Virtuosi, New Force in Motion, Dance On and New Energy.
Chinese opera audiences were treated to the department's eighth Chinese Opera Festival in the summer and annual Cantonese Opera Day in November. Dance Day, another large-scale free community event, was held in December.
The department also organised 23 major carnivals and 606 district art shows, attracting over 1,036,300 people.
Arts Education and Audience-building Projects
In 2017, the department organised 1,238 arts education and audience-building activities in schools, community halls and other public venues to promote the arts and encourage participation in cultural activities.
The department also sought to motivate students to engage in arts and cultural activities by extending its collaboration with the Education Bureau in designing arts education programmes which tied in with the school curriculum. Two themes were set for the 2017 Community Cultural Ambassador Scheme: 'Elderly-oriented Performing Arts Project' and 'Community Arts Project with Interactions and Experiments in the Programme Format!
Major Culture and Arts Events
Hong Kong Arts Festival
The 45th Hong Kong Arts Festival presented 16 world premieres and 14 Asian premieres, including the festival's own productions: A Floating Family - A Trilogy and Hong Kong Odyssey. Other highlights included the festival opening performance of La Bayadère by Bavarian State Ballet, The Makropulos Case by National Theatre Brno, Ray Lee's sound installation Chorus, Jen Lewin's interactive event Super Pool and the festival finale, Dream of the Red Chamber, co-
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