Cover Czech National Ballet will perform ‘La Sylphide’ at Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025 (Photo: courtesy of Serghei Gherciu)
Czech National Ballet will perform ‘La Sylphide’ at Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025 (Photo: courtesy of Serghei Gherciu)
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The Hong Kong Arts Festival promises another year of mesmerising performances, featuring about 40 programmes of classics and brand-new creations, and brings top talents from Paris, Czech and Vienna to town
The Hong Kong Arts Festival, which is the city’s biggest annual performing arts event, will return next year in February and March. The organisers announced its new season’s line-up last week, and we can expect some crème de crème companies and artists in Hong Kong for the new season.
For those who love a good old opera, the festival will bring Georges Bizet’s Carmen, featuring costumes and sets in their original designs when it premiered in Paris in 1875. Book lovers, check out plays inspired by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
As for music and dance, there are several innovative productions: an interactive VR dance show that won the Venice Film Festival’s Best VR Experience award; a dystopian ballad and contemporary interpretation of Johann Strauss II’s waltz music by Vienna’s orchestra Klangforum Wien; and The Waste Land which blends hip-hop and acrobatic dance, music and TS Eliot’s poem of the same name.
More details will be announced in October. In the meantime, read our picks so you don’t miss the early-bird period that begins on October 10, 2024.
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1. ‘Time’ by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani
Above From left: Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani (Photos: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
From left: Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani (Photos: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Depicting the struggle between man and nature, Time is a theatrical work by multidisciplinary artist Shiro Takatani and Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, the latter is known for writing the film scores of Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) and The Last Emperor (1987). This production combines Sakamoto’s minimalistic, poignant music with Takatani’s riveting visual dreamscape—alongside Japanese dancer Rin Ishihara’s meditative dance movements.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Lyric Theatre, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Wan Chai. From March 13 to 15, 2025.
2. ‘Le Bal de Paris’
Above “Le Bal de Paris” (Image: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“Le Bal de Paris” (Image: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Created by the Spanish choreographer Blanca Li, the one-hour immersive and interactive VR performance Le Bal de Paris blurs the boundary between virtuality and reality as the audience is transported from a grand banquet hall to a magical garden party in Paris. They will experience dazzling music and dance performances within an illusory space and can choose their avatars’ digital costumes designed by Chanel. This production won the Venice Film Festival’s Best VR Experience award in 2021.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Studio Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui. From February 28 to March 9, 2025.
3. Bizet’s ‘Carmen’
Above “Carmen” (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“Carmen” (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Experience this iconic opera by French composer Georges Bizet, who died 150 years ago, in its most original fashion. Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de musique romantique française is a French research institute that promotes the rediscovery of 19th-century French romantic musical heritage. For this production of Carmen, the producers looked into the sketches and drafts of the costumes and sets from the opera’s very first production in Paris in 1875 and worked with Bru Zane France, Château de Versailles Spectacles and Opéra de Rouen Normandie to recreate a version that is very close to the original.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui. From March 27 to 30, 2025.
4. ‘Nagauta and Geisha: Treasured Traditions of Japan’
Above “Nagauta and Geisha: Treasured Traditions of Japan” (Photo: courtesy Robin Yong)
“Nagauta and Geisha: Treasured Traditions of Japan” (Photo: courtesy Robin Yong)
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The arts of the geisha have more than 300 years of history in Japan. While this cultural tradition remains present today, its seclusion from the rest of the world—mostly because of its exclusivity to regular clients and the recent tourist ban—makes it rare for outsiders to experience this art form.
However, the Hong Kong Arts Festival has put together two performances at the Hong Kong City Hall and Nan Lian Garden, where the audience can appreciate the arts of the geisha and maiko, without having to travel to Japan.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Hong Kong City Hall and Nan Lian Garden. From March 4 to 8, 2025.
Read more: How tourism impacts the geisha community in Gion, Kyoto—and what you can do about it
5. ‘Nureyev & Friends—A Ballet Gala Tribute’
Above Rudolf Nureyev (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
Rudolf Nureyev (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Swedish Ballet will come together in this production dedicated to Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev, who was celebrated for transforming the role of the male dancer from supporting the ballerina to being a star in his own right.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui. From March 21 to 22, 2025.
6. ‘Wuthering Heights’
Above “Wuthering Heights” (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“Wuthering Heights” (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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British actor and director Emma Rice—together with four UK theatres including Bristol Old Vic—turns Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights about love, desire and cruelty into a music theatre experience that features live music, comedy, puppetry, dance and projections. When the show premiered in 2021 in the UK, it received five-star ratings from The Times, The Daily Mail and The York Press.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Lyric Theatre, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Wan Chai. From March 26 to 29, 2025.
7. ‘The Waste Land’
Above “The Waste Land” (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
“The Waste Land” (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Arts Festival)
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Amsterdam Sinfonietta and ISH Dance Collective, also from Amsterdam, take performing arts to the extreme. In this production, which is inspired by TS Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, they explore themes of despair, hope and regeneration through live music, hip-hop and acrobatic dance that defy gravity—think walking up walls and performing dangerous moves mid-air.
Hong Kong Arts Festival 2025, Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui. March 15 to 16, 2025.
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
