It has been twelve years since the first i-Dance Festival in 2004. While the rich programme line-up of the last seven Festivals has been feasts for the mind and the body, our friends also told us their preference for thematic events. Taking their advice, we have introduced a thematic approach to i-Dance(HK) 2016, which is to look at contemporary dance through the lens of “tradition” and “technology”.
The majority of the Festival events are conceived along these lines. For example, all the performing artists in the Solo and Improvisation series come from serious classical dance training. New this year is “i-Dance Lab”, a series of co-creation by contemporary dance choreographers and new media artists, intended to rock the development of Hong Kong’s contemporary dance.
The three Artists-in-Focus of the Festival are Helen Lai, maestro choreographer from Hong Kong, Pichet Klunchun, internationally-acclaimed Thai dance artist, and Wen Hui, Beijing choreographer who catches your eye like a bright red spot. We invite artists to show off their dance right in front of producers at the new i-Dance Festival – Open Platform.
As a pre-Festival event, “Dancing-All-Around” traces the now-gone coastline of the Island through a series of site-specific dance performance on the West of Hong Kong. Tens of local and overseas artists come together at the Festival opening gala-performance, a once-and-for-all gathering of the stars at Kwai Tsing Theatre Auditorium! As an i-Dance ritual, the Festival will close in the outdoor where artists and audience “Dance Under the Sky”.
A piece of bad news that will cloud i-Dance is that Celine Bacque, originator and key representative of i-Dance Korea, passed away on May 9th 2016 as a result of sudden Sepsis attack. We are devastated to hear this but we also made our resolution to make i-Dance (2016) a successful event, so that we could dedicate it to the beautiful and benign Celine. We hope that she will always dance happily in the other territory out there!
As life is transient, I can’t really be sure if i-Dance Festival will continue in 2017 and 2018. But it is always a blessing to dance. Let us celebrate our presence and make the most out of today. Let us “Dance Now” at i-Dance(HK)2016!
Victor Choi-wo MA
Artistic Director of Y-Space
