Organised by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC, from the Portuguese acronym), the 22nd Macao City Fringe Festival will be held from 17 to 28 January, featuring 17 extraordinary programmes and a series of outreach activities. Upholding the concept of “All around the city, our stages, our patrons, our artists”, this year’s Fringe Festival will continue to present the participatory exhibition “Art Exhibition for All” at the Former Iec Long Firecracker Factory and the Areia Preta Urban Park (near the Areia Preta Health Centre), providing the public a platform to showcase their creative works. Interested parties are welcome to submit their artworks before 12 January or improvise on the spot.
The “Art Exhibition for All” will be held at the Former Iec Long Firecracker Factory from 17 to 22 January and at Areia Preta Urban Park (near the Health Centre) from 23 to 28 January. All interested parties can submit their artwork together with a completed application form to the Cultural Affairs Bureau Building located at Tap Siac Square during office hours from 8 to 12 January or at the exhibition sites during the exhibition period. Creativity comes first, regardless of forms and themes. An improvisation zone will also be available on-site for members of the public to unleash their creativity, showing that everyone can be an artist. Application forms can be downloaded from the IC’s website at www.icm.gov.mo or the Fringe Festival’s website at www.macaucityfringe.gov.mo.
In order to encourage the public to participate in creation, this edition of the Fringe Festival will also feature three sessions of the “Creative Workshops for All” on 13 and 14 January, including “Children’s Creative Light Clay Workshop”, “Creative Family Woodcraft Workshop”, and “Creative Electronics Workshop”. The workshops take different mediums as theme, introducing participants the characteristics of these mediums and allowing them to unleash creativity and create unique artworks under the instructors’ guidance. Those artworks made in the workshops will be exhibited at the “Art Exhibition for All”.
This year’s Fringe Festival will offer an array of intriguing programmes that are both soul-nourishing and highly interactive. In the immersive performance 25Feet jointly presented by The100Hands from the Netherlands and More Production from Shanghai, dancers will guide the audience to explore the relationship between space and the human body in a square of “25-feet” through games of physical contact. In work.txt, an audience-driven interactive performance produced by British artist Nathan Ellis and More Production from Shanghai, participants can redefine the meaning of work. In the show FreeSteps – Swinging Years of the “Crème de la Fringe: SilverARTS Festival”, ten elderly dancers from Taiwan will join hands with the audience to present a special dance. In the show Let the Flower in Your Heart Bloom, Chinese dance instructors and choreographers Stella Ho and Leong Iek Kei will express their feelings through the art of dance and perform the dance that they hold in their hearts. The show One, Two…and a Half will inject dance into objects within reach, allowing the participants to explore their own creativity through body movement. The show Game On of the “Crème de la Fringe: Contemporary Circus Festival” will enable the audience to release themselves through the medium of games, keeping them entertained and bringing them into the spotlight of the performance. The show Track will present stunning juggling tricks by using crystal balls and diabolos; The Crow Clowns is Macao’s original clown theatre featuring a combination of clowning and juggling, telling a story filled with laughter and tears.
Tickets for the 22nd Macao City Fringe Festival are now on sale through the Macau Ticketing Network, telephone and online booking (local and overseas). 24-hour ticketing hotline: 2855 5555; ticketing website: www.macauticket.com. Registration for the “Creative Workshops for All” can be made through “Activity applications” of the Macao One Account (activity.mo.gov.mo/activity-h5/activity-list-web) from 10am on 6 January. 20 places are available per session and registration fee is MOP50. Distribution is on a first-come, first-served basis. Registration will be open until 11 January or until all places are filled. For telephone registration and enquiries, please contact IC through tel. no. 8399 6872 during office hours. For more information about the programmes, please visit the Fringe Festival’s website at www.macaucityfringe.gov.mo, the “Macao City Fringe Festival” page on Facebook, IC’s WeChat official account “IC_Art_Macao”, or the Macao activities website “Enjoy Macao”.
