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Freespace Dance 2024

21 November 2024 - 15 December 2024

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The highly anticipated Freespace Dance festival is returning to Freespace at the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK), running from 21 November to 15 December 2024. Celebrating the fifth anniversary of Freespace, the Performing Arts Division of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) is curating a cutting-edge programme of four contemporary dance works by renowned local and international choreographers under the theme “Re: TIME and SPACE”, challenging audiences’ fundamental concepts of time and space and stimulating their imagination. The festival will include sharing sessions from independent artists, workshops, post-performance meet-the-artist sessions and more. 

Award-winning Hong Kong choreographer Daniel Yeung kicks off the festival with a new commission, Freespace Dance-exhibitionist

Opening the festival is the world premiere of Freespace Dance-exhibitionist (21-24 November), commissioned by WestK and created by award-winning Hong Kong dance artist Daniel Yeung, known for his expertise in exploring the possibilities of artistic creation through new media, site-specific elements, the human body and movement. This new piece revisits Yeung’s renowned multimedia solo dance series Dance / Dan’s Exhibitionist, which gained international acclaim more than 20 years ago and has been presented at numerous festivals across Europe and Asia.

In collaboration with new media artists from Taipei and Hong Kong, in his new piece Yeung once again transcends the limitations of body and medium, unearthing the hidden spaces and new spatial possibilities of The Box. The audience will recline on the floor, witnessing the dancers soar freely in the air, experiencing the theatre from a fresh perspective. Drawing on the power of new media, the choreographer reveals the changes in the artist’s body over 25 years and the imprint of time.

Emerging Thai choreographer Kornkarn Rungsawang’s Mali Bucha: Dance Offering blends traditional and contemporary dance drawing on new technologies

Inspired by the Thai vernacular practice of Ram kea bon more than four centuries old, up-and-coming Thai choreographer Kornkarn Rungsawang presents Mali Bucha: Dance Offering (29 November to 1 December), a work that combines traditional ritual-inspired dance, music and modern technology to bridge the material, virtual and spiritual worlds. Through virtual and augmented reality technologies, the work creates a digital shrine, while Rungsawang navigating between the audience and the virtual spirits and inviting members of the audience to convey their wishes and offerings. The work transposes the social and cultural practice of a votive dance commonly performed on street corners into a contemporary physical and virtual context, creating a new kind of shared experience.

Dimitris Papaioannou’s INSIDE, a six-hour unedited meditative theatrical video installation, captures the dynamics of daily routines 

World renowned Greek avant-garde artist Dimitris Papaioannou, who was the youngest-ever artist to direct an Olympic Games opening ceremony for Athens in 2004, presents a theatrical installation which includes a six-hour unedited video documentation of INSIDE, alongside BACKSIDE, a behind-the-scenes documentary detailing the creation of this work (4-8 December).

INSIDE captures a choreographed live performance in 2011, staged in a room where 30 performers engaged in simple, repetitive movements that depicted the various routines of returning home, presented in countless combinations and superimpositions, inviting audiences to watch the action as if gazing at a landscape where time feels extended. Filmed and edited by Papaioannou himself, BACKSIDE, offers a behind-the-scenes perspective of the live action as the original performance was taking place. INSIDE has garnered acclaim at major art festivals in cities including Athens, Amsterdam, Montpellier, Basel, Dresden, Turin, Rome, Montreal, and more.

TANZ, a bold and challenging spectacle by Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger, brings the festival to a close

Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger, a leading figure in contemporary European experimental performance, presents TANZ (13-15 December), a bold exploration of the pain and discipline of the female body. This work combines ballet, circus arts, stunt work and dark comedy, responding to images and fantasies handed down through the centuries by classical ballet. It creates parodies of sensational images that transform the rough into the sublime in search of perfection.

Inspired by 19th-century romantic ballet, Holzinger frames the performance as a classical ballet class, where a teacher guides a group of female students in action ballet training, the so-called sylphidic studies and they learn how to transfer their skills to a genre of bloody, supernatural spectacle, and use the articulation of the dancer’s body as a tool to penetrate space and gain flight to embody the ethereal movements of sylphs. The performance critiques and challenges the conventional body training of female dancers through humour cultivation of female body through, brutal imagery and radical body art, questioning conventional definitions of beauty, femininity, and so-called good taste.

The all-female cast ranges in age from 29 to 62 and includes professional dancers, performers and stunt artists from diverse training backgrounds. TANZ has received numerous accolades, including “Best Performance of the Year” from the German theatre magazine Theatre Heute and the NESTROY Prize for Best Direction.

This performance is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Goethe-Institut.

Second edition of “FIRST Creation Platform” presents two work-in-progress showcases and new creative concepts from four groups of independent artists

Launched by WestK in 2023, the creation research and development platform FIRST aims to discover the potential of local choreographers and encourage them to offer first looks at new creative ideas in any format, while audiences and industry peers are invited to offer feedback and join discussions to support the future development of the ideas. Freespace Dance 2024 will showcase two new work-in-progress presentations, one by TS Crew (Hong Kong) in collaboration with contact Gonzo (Osaka), and another by Hong Kong artist Zelia ZZ Tan. In addition, four groups of independent artists, including Scarlet Yu, Woo Yat-hei, Chan Wai-lok (with Larry Shuen) and Wayson Poon (with Kong Chan), will present their latest creative concepts at The Room of Freespace (23-24 November).

The festival will also feature various workshops, talks and post-performance meet-the-artist sessions.