Cover From left: Brazilian cellist Rafael Kalil and German dancer Christine He (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Club’s Hong Kong Fringe Festival)
From left: Brazilian cellist Rafael Kalil and German dancer Christine He (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Club’s Hong Kong Fringe Festival)
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After a 13-year hiatus, the city’s contemporary and avant-garde arts festival run by Fringe Club will present more than 100 acts, ranging from dance, music and drama to visual art, art tech and art therapy
Non-profit arts centre Fringe Club, which occupies the 111-year-old South Block of the Old Dairy Farm Depot at 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, will be home to the revived Hong Kong Fringe Festival from January 2-25, 2025.
It will bring more than 100 acts from Hong Kong, mainland China and overseas, including classical music, jazz, contemporary pop, traditional Chinese music, drama, dance, physical theatre, film screenings with discussions, performance skill workshops, art therapy concerts and experimental art tech.
The Fringe Festival makes a return after 13 years. Chairperson Regina Ching-yee Leung-Tong will lead the 2025 edition, along with other board members such as Sophia Kao-Lo, who also sits on West Kowloon’s board; film director and martial artist Antony Szeto; pianist Sheryl Lee Ming Chi; conductor and composer Gustav Mak Ka Lok; and honorary treasurer Anson Chan.
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Above From left: Regina Ching-yee Leung-Tong and Anson Chan (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Festival)
From left: Regina Ching-yee Leung-Tong and Anson Chan (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Festival)
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In an interview with Tatler, Chan reveals that the festival stopped in 2011 because there wasn’t “enough energy and outreach. I don’t want to be critical of the previous management, because they started the club in the early 1980s, but they stuck around for too long.”
The club was founded by Benny Chia in 1983. Together with administrator Catherine Lau, the two led the club until 2022. “They did well in the first 20 to 25 years. But as they aged, they became more establishment-oriented,” he says. “Any sort of modern, contemporary art platform ought not to be managed by the same two people for 40 years. You need young people with energy to administer and manage the club. Eventually, by 2011, they stopped the festival.”
Leung-Tong says the new management team was brought in in April this year, and with that, she and the team thought of starting the festival again, which “we promised the Hong Kong government”, which owns the historic building. “We have tried to keep the scale a bit small because this is the first time we are trying to restart it.”
Above Dancers at the press conference of Hong Kong Fringe Festival (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Festival)
Dancers at the press conference of Hong Kong Fringe Festival (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Festival)
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That said, the lineup doesn’t seem exactly “small”. “We had a little bit more than 300 artists, musicians and actors who wanted to participate [in the festival]. We selected one-third of them, about 100 out of 300,” Chan says. Quite a few of them are international artists, from Brazil, Germany and beyond. The rest are from Hong Kong and mainland China, especially from Shanghai—perhaps given Fringe Club’s presence at the China Shanghai International Arts Festival in October and November.
This marks a stark difference from the past when the festival used to emphasise Western and local artists. Chan says that by introducing more artists from mainland China, the festival can have a “good balance” between different cultures and art forms.
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Above Dancers at the press conference of Hong Kong Fringe Festival (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Festival)
Dancers at the press conference of Hong Kong Fringe Festival (Photo: courtesy of Fringe Festival)
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“We encourage non-mainstream, cutting-edge, avant-garde art, so the performers don’t have to be very famous. They just have to have originality [and] talent,” he says. “As long as it’s in good taste, as long as we feel that they’re talented and bring something new and cutting-edge to the audience, we’re happy to have them.”
Most of the performers are young adults. “Many of the Hong Kong artists’ first performances took place at Fringe Club,” says Leung-Tong, who hopes to continue this legacy of the club as a place of nurturing arts talents. “The real mission of the festival is to help young and up-and-coming artists have a platform where they can demonstrate their talents before they get famous.”
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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.
