Front-row ticket

The Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) — whose 50th anniversary lineup includes Colossus — is no stranger to adapting to the challenges of staging an international marquee event in the time of a pandemic. In this case, Lake emailed video breakdowns of the choreography to her dancers in Paris, and later in the year, to dancers at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA). The videos were a useful tool but, says Lake, "The dancers learned most of the choreography in real time from us via Zoom."

Having to dance in a face mask and learn synchronized moves with the time lags that can affect streamed video are just two of the challenges faced by this year's HKAF artists. What has been far more disruptive — and in the year when the festival's organizers were pulling out the stops for its 50th edition — is Hong Kong's fifth wave of COVID-19.

On Jan 7, the government implemented tightened social-distancing measures, including the closure of performing-arts venues. As the local health crisis snowballed, HKAF's programmers shifted shows online or, as in the case of Colossus, postponed them until further notice. Earlier this month, HKAF announced refunds for the vast majority of tickets.