The 2nd Hong Kong International Shakespeare Festival: Shakespeare Dance Theatre

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Planting Shakespeare

If emotions could photosynthesise, how might the body grow in Shakespeare’s soil?

Planting Shakespeare treats text as “fertile soil”, from Hamlet‘s melancholy to Richard III’s ambition, these effects are transmuted into vegetal strategies of rooting and phototropism. By evolving the dancer into a “Plant-Body”, this ecological experiment dismantles anthropocentrism. Guided by mathematical sketches of emotion, the work captures trajectories of growth and decay, offering a radical re-reading of classics through multi-species perception and somatic critique.

We are (not) Romeo and Juliet

Love is one of humanity’s most enduring emotions — but what is it that binds two people so tightly? Drawing inspiration from Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy Romeo and Juliet, this performance begins with the original’s vision of a fate-scorched love — fierce, absolute, and irrevocable — and turns its gaze toward the questions it leaves behind: what we believe love is worth, and how it might exist.

Deconstructing the classic text, the work reimagines it through physical language and stage storytelling, focusing on the push and pull between two people — love, encounter, survival, and learning how to be with one another. Looking back on the meaning of every meeting and every moment of staying, it excavates, layer by layer, the weight of “love” suspended between the instant and the eternal.

Date and Time

12–14 June 2026 (Friday to Sunday)
8pm

13–14 June 2026 (Saturday to Sunday)
3pm

Approximately 1 hour 45 minutes including an intermission of 15 minutes