Matching steps in May

As Hong Kong's French May Arts Festival enters its 30th year, Gennady Oreshkin turns the spotlight on its lineup of dance shows, some of which are a product of collaborations between artists from Hong Kong, France and beyond.

The French May Arts Festival saw scaled-back editions in 2021 and 2022, primarily because artists from France weren't able to participate. This week the festival is back in full force for its 30th-anniversary edition, with a varied program of dance, theater, dining experiences, visual art and cinema. In anticipation of the lively (pulsating) energy the festival's cross-cultural creative exchanges are expected to generate, the organizers have summarized the current edition's theme as "Pulsarte".

When the French May was launched in Hong Kong three decades ago, the city did not have access to high-quality visual and performance art sourced from around the world to the extent that it has today.

"Back in 1993, Hong Kong was not what it is today. There was no Tai Kwun, no M+ and no Art Basel Hong Kong. So, of course, the landscape for art and culture was different," Xavier Mah, the festival's general manager, points out. The French May fulfilled the need of an audience starved for cultural content from the Western world.

Today the festival's focus is on reaching out to all possible segments of the local community. "It's important for the French May to raise awareness of arts and culture, and have a cultural exchange between artists and the audience, especially within specific communities not very familiar with arts and culture," Mah adds.

Promoting French art and culture in Hong Kong remains the festival's core mission. It is equally keen on facilitating collaborations between renowned French artists and their Hong Kong counterparts. The dance piece You and You and You and Me and You and Us and You..., premiering on May 18, is a case in point. A highlight of the French May's eagerly-awaited Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels program, this new work is a product of acclaimed French choreographer Christian Rizzo's joint venture with Hong Kong dancers.

Now in its second year, the program named after the luxury jewelry brand is meant to support choreographic heritage and showcase modern and contemporary dance repertoires of cutting-edge artists from France and beyond. Such patronage is of a place with Van Cleef & Arpels's history of celebrating the performance art form. Both Alfred Van Cleef, who co-founded the brand in 1896 with father-in-law Salomon Arpels, and his wife Estelle were ballet aficionados.

Nicolas Bos, president and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels, rewinds to 1941, the year when the maison's signature ballerina-shaped bejeweled brooches were launched - "celebrating this art form par excellence".

"While Western classical ballet contributed a vast repertoire of forms, Van Cleef & Arpels was also deeply inspired by the rich heritage of oriental dance," he adds, referencing a Balinese dance-inspired clip released in 1969.

Remote access

Over the course of a three-week residency at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in May, Rizzo will put the finishing touches to You and You... This is the final phase of a journey that began last year, when pandemic restrictions were still in force in Hong Kong, practically ruling out international travel. The choreographer held online workshops for the participating Hong Kong dancers from his base in Paris. As a continuation of the 2022 dialogue, this year French video artist Sophie Laly came on board.

You and You... is meant to showcase the fruits of "individual and collective research that fuses visual art and choreographic elements", Rizzo explains. The production features local luminaries like Joseph Lee - the multiaward-winning artistic director of the contemporary dance company Unlock Dancing Plaza and Hong Kong Ballet soloist Ma Renjie, hailed for his portrayal of Siegfried in Swan Lake and Romeo in Bertrand d'At's Romeo and Juliet.

Other pieces created during the workshops led by Rizzo will be presented between now and 2025, Mah adds.

After months of attending virtual workshops, Lee is thrilled about getting a chance to share studio space with the French choreographer at long last. "Finally, we can get him over to work in the same physical space," he says. "Last year it was a process of polishing the material toward making solo performances, while this year there'll be group work as well."

Lee acknowledges the challenges involved in collaborating remotely, as opposed to getting to work on a piece at the venue. A dancer gets to experience, firsthand, a dialogue between movements and the surrounding space emerge in the latter case. Yet, having been studio-bound for much of last year, when Lee finally got to rehearse at the HKAPA venue, once the pandemic restrictions were lifted, he found it took him some getting used to before he could engage with the space.

The French May is putting on a second piece choreographed by Rizzo on May 20 and 21, titled Sakinan Gze p Batar (An Overprotected Eye Always Gets Sand In It). The work debuted in 2012 and is a result of the choreographer's collaboration with Turkish dancer Kerem Gelebek.

"When I approached Kerem for a solo performance, I wanted, primarily, to concentrate on melancholy and exile," Rizzo explains. "The concept of exile is no longer confined to a territory but can apply to the self, i.e. exiling oneself from oneself. Melancholy, however, remains obligatory. Kerem manipulates the space on stage, and lays down danced fragments like haikus, sketches or notes that together form a collection of thoughts born from movement."

Butterfly wings

Also participating in the French May's dance program is Polish-born, Paris-based choreographer Ola Maciejewska, known for making dancers maneuver yards of silk to create magical forms on stage. Maciejewska draws inspiration from the American modern dance pioneer Loe Fuller who created a form of burlesque dance in which dancers work costumes made from hundreds of yards of silk in ingenious ways - to make them resemble flowers, animals, and even fire.

Maciejewska's Bombyx Mori (the species name of the domestic silkworm or moth) takes Fuller's technique to the next level. "The (domestic) silk caterpillar has become entirely dependent on human beings for survival," explains Maciejewska, referring to breeding practices that render the species incapable of flying and hence unable to find a mate without human assistance. The choreographer adds that the piece highlights the natural-artificial dichotomy, "to produce a strong metaphor for the hybrid nature of things" around us.

Hybridity - as it relates to the co-existence of online and on-site events - addressed the audiences' need for culture during the height of the pandemic. Fortunately, that phase seems to have passed. As with other events on Hong Kong's arts calendar, the French May is, once again, fully live in its current edition. With cross-cultural collaboration and outreach at its core, the festival is on track to engage with Hong Kong audiences in the physical space.