The Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macau SAR Government presents the 25th Macao Arts Festival (MAF) with the aim of creating a platform for cultural exchange and promoting the arts development in the territory. Celebrating its Silver Jubilee, the MAF will open on Friday, 2 May and, for the period of over one month, will feature thirty-one acts in sixteen different venues, more than half of which are local productions, including comprehensive exhibitions and outreach programmes, in a total of over 200 events, striving to vitalise the citizens’ cultural lives and to broaden their artistic horizons.
Apart from local performances, the programme of this year’s MAF includes a varied array of performances from Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Portugal, United Kingdom, France, USA, Canada, Argentina, Japan, and Singapore, ranging from contemporary dance to Cantonese opera, from multimedia performances to shadow puppetry, from audiovisual architectural mapping to exhibitions of western media and photography. Shows for all tastes take to the stage, not only at the city’s performing arts venues but also at many of Macao’s world heritage sites. This year, the Festival is themed ‘Impulse’ - a metaphor for the surging power of the arts which not only nourishes sentiments but boosts creativity. In addition, it demonstrates the progressively strong vitality of the Macao Arts Festival.
We are looking forward to witnessing the 25th MAF opening and closing performances, specially commissioned to local art groups. The Festival begins with the Macao Arts Festival Silver Jubilee Opening Concert, featuring local musical elites specially invited to gather in Tap Seac Square on May 2, at 7:30pm. A Dream of Light, bringing one more original audiovisual mapping show to the Ruins of St. Paul’s from May 31 to June 8 at 8pm and 9pm, is sure to bring the Festival to a scintillating close.
On May 3 and 4, at 8pm, the Dom Pedro V Theatre will host Venetians Want to Get a House, the most recent production by the Macao Experimental Theatre. An adaptation of Clybourne Park, a recent play by American playwright Bruce Norris, awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play, the play explores the impact of fast-paced urban development.
The Old Court Building hosts on May 3 and 4 at 8pm a production by Stella & Artists, The Dancer Studio Macao and Amalgama Dance Company (Portugal) who have been cooperating and promoting artistic exchanges since 2012. Revival, an original work that combines enthusiastic and passionate dance with live music, is the result of these exchanges. Other local productions feature dance, theatre, music, multimedia and family entertainment performances, as well as items of Intangible Cultural Heritage such as Cantonese Opera, Macanese Theatre (Patuá theatre), and Cantonese Naamyam. Naamyam will interweave with dance on stage for the first time, offering an innovative and surprising performance in a traditional Cantonese tea house.
At the core of the MAF programme are other treats. These include internationally acclaimed modernist ballet Dance, a collaboration between renowned choreographer Lucinda Childs, composer Philip Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt, that takes to the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium stage on 17 and 18 May, at 8pm; Robert Lepage’s theatrical work The Andersen Project, regarded as a classic that merges real with virtual theatre, which has gained popularity over the years and will also be presented at the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium on 23 and 24 May at 8pm; Dance Dome, an innovative and intimate 360° immersive cinema developed to surround its audiences in cutting edge contemporary dance in several sessions from 19 to 25 May (Friendship Square) and from 28 May to 1 June (Pak Tai Temple Square); and Eighteen Springs, a fusion of classical and modern theatre, that integrates multimedia design and reinterprets the work of Eileen Chang by adopting an experimental approach, to be held on 31 May and 1 June on the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium stage. In short, this year’s Macao Arts Festival contains many highlights, catering to audiences’ different tastes.
Art exhibitions are also featured in the MAF. The Macao Annual Visual Arts Exhibition 2014, this year dedicated to western media, aims at promoting local visual arts and encouraging home-grown talent to participate and exhibit their work. The Macao Museum hosts Collotype • Recurrence, Spatial Convergence of John Thomson and Wong Ho Sang. In this exhibition, renowned Macao photographer Wong Ho Sang aims at providing visitors with a more specific understanding of the photographic processing method – the Collotype or wet plate - used by John Thomson (1837-1921), a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer and traveller. For more information please consult the MAF booklet or website at www.icm.gov.mo/fam.
Tickets for the 25th Macao Arts Festival will be available after 10am on 16 March 2014 at all Macao Kong Seng Ticketing Network outlets. Telephone and online bookings will be available from 12pm on the same day. On the first day of ticket sales, ticket purchases are limited to a maximum of 10 tickets per performance per person. This year, the Festival offers early bird discounts of up to 40%, between 16 and 30 March, when buying tickets for at least 4 different performances or when buying 10 or more tickets for the same performance. After 31 March, purchasers meeting the same conditions will still receive a 30% discount. A 20% discount is also available on tickets to any show upon presentation of a Bank of China (Macau), Banco Weng Hang (Macau), LTD., Tai Fung Bank, ICBC (Macau), BCM Bank, Luso International Banking LTD. or BNU Credit Card or a Bank of China Tri-Currency Debit Card.
For more information on the 25th MAF, please call 8399 6699 during office hours.
Ticketing hotlines: (853) 2855 5555 in Macao; (852) 2380 5083 in Hong Kong; (86) 139 2691 1111 in Mainland China.
Online Reservations: www.macauticket.com
The MAF’s press conference took place on 5 March, Wednesday, at 3pm at the MGM Macau Grand Ballroom. Present at the press conference were the President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Dr. Ung Vai Meng accompanied by representatives of the Festival’s supporting entities, namely the Deputy Director of the Macao Government Tourist Office, Dr. Tse Heng Sai; the Director of Chinese Programmes of TDM – Teledifusão de Macau, Mr. Ieong Tou Ian; the Commercial Vice-President of Air Macau, Mr. Yang Jianhua and the Vice-President of Marketing and Communications of MGM Macau, Mr. Toby Leung. Present were also the Vice-President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Dr. Leong Hio Ming; the Head of the Special Projects Division of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Mr. Boyce Lam Chon Keong; and representatives of the Festival’s participating groups.
