17th Macao City Fringe Festival officially inaugurated taking the public on a search for the city’s treasures
The 17th Macao City Fringe Festival, organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau, takes place from 12 to 21 January 2018. The opening ceremony was held on 12 January, at 3pm, at the Old Court Building, and was officiated by the acting President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Ieong Chi Kin, and the representatives of the art groups.
This edition of the Macao City Fringe Festival is themed “Treasures Hunting”. Through different means of expression, it takes the public on a stroll around town to uncover the treasures that have likely been forgotten. On the day of the opening ceremony, the IC offered the special edition of the programme My Old Man is a Bus Driver, guests and members of the press were invited to join on a bus tour, wandering around to search for the city’s treasures. Three creative and excellent programmes were presented that night, inviting the audience to uncover treasures of daily life. The Fringe Festival brings the production Jin-Tang, by Taiwan creator Ma Wei Yuan, that makes use of body language and instant synthetic images to reveal a period of his family’s history and to let the audience take a peek at the most intimate anatomy of an individual’s life experience. The play Niyaro: Yearning for Homeland, through chanting, dancing and ritual ceremonies held at Hac Sa Beach, makes use of the environmental space and interactive means to call for the identity recognition buried deep within each person. In the play Always in My Heart, the protagonist puts pieces of her life in her cakes and shares with the public the different flavours of life. Tickets for some of the programmes are limited, the public is advised to purchase their tickets as soon as possible.
The 10-day long Macao City Fringe Festival offers a number of surprises not to be missed. Body language is the best means to convey ideas. Igor and Moreno, from the United Kingdom, present the show Idiot – Syncrasy and transform the complicated into simple, taking common elements of two ethnic dances to express a yearning for the purest human nature. Hong Kong dance group Unlock Dancing Plaza, a recurring winner of the Hong Kong Dance Awards, joins hands with Japanese Namstrops to present three different programmes of improvised dance and that showcase physical strength and body movements: bolero, Hurdle #3 and A Short, Thick Rainbow.
In addition, the Fringe Festival’s extended activities include the following events: the sharing session on “Art Festivals in the Cities 2.0”, to be held on 18 January, at 7pm, at the Old Court Building, inviting curators of performing arts events from all over the world to share experiences on local festivals and cultural environment in their hometowns; the Experience Sharing Session of Arts Administrators “Arts Administrators in Mainland China: Stay Deficient or Go Resourceful?”, to be held on 21 January, at 6pm, on the 3rd floor of the Village Mall, inviting the acclaimed independent theatre producer Yuan Hong to share his experience in arts administration; the “Interactive Talk: Know more about Theatre for Babies”, presented by Polyglot Theatre from Australia, to be held on 19 January, at 7pm, at the St. Dominic’s Activity Centre, broadening participants’ imagination with regards to theatres for babies and exploring the role of adults in the theatre space.
Tickets for the 17th Macao City Fringe Festival are available at the Macau Ticketing Network. Registration for the Fringe Festival’s extended activities are available online through the website www.icm.gov.mo/eform/event. For more information about the programme, please visit the Macao City Fringe Festival’s webpage atwww.macaucityfringe.gov.mo. 24 hours ticketing hotline: 2855 5555; ticketing website: www.macauticket.com.
