Taking center stage

The 25th edition of Macao Arts Festival offers avant-garde performances in historic venues.

Macao native and Cultural Affairs Bureau special projects division head Boyce Lam has long been a fan of his city's arts festival.

"I saw the festival as a child and have been involved in it since its 13th edition," Lam says.

"I am so happy to see it grow and gain audiences' approval."

Now in its 25th year, the "silver jubilee" edition of the festival retains its focus of Macao arts for Macao audiences, with approximately half of its program consisting of local performers.

They share the stage with the likes of the US' Lucinda Childs Dance Company's revival of Dance (May 17-18), a landmark Postmodern classic; Canadian Robert Lepage's virtual theater project marking the 200th anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, dubbed The Andersen Project (May 23-24); Singapore's W!ld Rice's production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (May 16-17); and Portuguese siren Carminho's interpretations of soul-wrenching Fado standards (May 4).

There is an extensive family program to instill a love for the arts at an early age.

Argentinean clown and puppeteer Roberto White uses everyday objects, such as plastic bags and wrapping paper, for his mime-based puppet production Special Creatures (May 16-18).

Japan's original contemporary shadow play theater Kakashiza brings the Wild Kingdom to Macao with agile hands against light and shadow in Animare (May 10-13).

And Julien Cottereau, a mime and former clown with Cirque du Soleil, will mesmerize audiences as a little boy in Imagine Toi (May 23-25).

"I would highlight Dance, a seminal collaboration among three 20th-century masters－choreography by Lucinda Childs and music composed by Philip Glass, set against the Modernist film by visual artist Sol LeWitt," Lam says.

Dance combines the athleticism of contemporary dance movements with natural walking rhythms, leaps and sudden changes in direction for a complex show that appears simple. The live dancers are juxtaposed against LeWitt's film background of 1979 dancers performing the same routine. Dance was revived in 2009 before touring London, Vienna and New York City.

"Dance is much the same as it was originally seen in 1979," admits Alisa Regas, managing director and creative principal with Pomegranate Arts, the company mounting Dance with Childs.

"The main difference is actually in the dancers themselves. Onscreen, the dancers from 1979 were much less formally trained and have a different quality to the movement. This has been one of the most interesting aspects of the project: The work itself appears timeless while the dancers interpreting it are very much of our own era."

"The Patua theater is one of the most awaited shows in each edition of the MAF," says Lam.