HK Arts Festival serves up medley of good, excellent and cliched

Tradition and technology danced hand in hand at the opening weekend of the 53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) — which swept this writer from an afternoon at a "virtual reality" (VR) ballet to the rousing spectacle of the festival-opening concert by the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna on Feb 28.

The "VR interactive dance" Le Bal de Paris de Blanca Li, staged at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, certainly delivers on its tagline - watching fellow audience members awkwardly jiggle amid a grotesque cartoon of Parisian cliches being the production's greatest pleasure.

Thankfully, participants cannot identify one another, having been loaded up with tech, strapped in eight places, and plunged into an unwieldy VR machine headset. Immersed in the Spanish choreographer's virtual world, one begins by choosing an outfit (an unsubtle plug for a luxury fashion brand) for the ball. Each costume is topped by an ugly animal mask eerily reminiscent of the baddie VIPs in Squid Game.

The group is joined by two professional dancers, unenviably tasked with making the 10 spectator-participants hold hands and twirl, between a few impressive set pieces.

We're transported into a succession of hackneyed Jazz Age caricatures - a ballroom, garden party and tasteless burlesque show — linked together by a trite narrative about a rich girl playing hard to get, the dialogue delivered in a Disney-esque pitch, matched only by Tao Gutierrez's cloying score. It's dizzying and nauseating, in more ways than one.

The experience isn't seamless. In this make-believe world, I am run over by a tram. In real life I headbutted another participant. Notably, Le Bal de Paris won the Lion award for Best VR Experience at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival. One imagines the tech has improved considerably in the past four years!

While I enjoyed the novelty of seeing myself in a wolf-headed tux and an LBD alike — the real question is: Does such gimmickry really belong in a high-profile arts festival?

No one is asking that about the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, whose tux-toting traditionalists traveled across the world to present the same crowd-pleasing opera arias its predecessors have been performing for more than 250 years, directed with pomp under the baton of esteemed compatriot conductor Donato Renzetti.

Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari soared on the goosebump-inducing Assisa AI Piè d'un Salce from Otello, while bass-baritone Simone Alberghini belted out Accusata di furto! from La Gazza Ladra with suitable gravitas.

The evening opened with the same opera's overture and its embarrassing riches of hummable melodies. The remainder of the first half was given over to a robust reading of Mendelssohn's Mediterranean-flavored "Italian" Symphony No 4 in A Major, an upbeat, lyrical piece inspired by the German composer's visits to the orchestra's homeland.

A far more intimate encounter was enjoyed with Eliso Virsaladze. Her March 2 recital at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts was centered around a spellbinding reading of Brahms' Piano Sonata No 1 in C Major that demonstrated an artist in complete communion with their instrument. Earlier, all the gravity and levity were rinsed from the score of Schubert's bitty Six Moments Musicaux, while the closing Piano Sonata No 7 in B-flat Major by Prokofiev — named "Stalingrad," the middle part of the Russian composer's "war trilogy" — was a master class in drama and dexterity, especially evident in the driving final movement, written in a tumbling 7/8 time signature.

A very different piano virtuoso, Matthew Whitaker opened the No Limits program — running concurrent to HKAF - with two shows at Hong Kong City Hall on March 1 and 2, each featuring a completely different repertoire. The latter engagement offered a crowd-pleasing stroll through various jazz subgenres — from a focused acoustic trio reading of Ahmad Jamal's Tranquility to the frenetic fusion of Chick Corea's Spain and Jorge Ben Jor's Latin stomper Mas Que Nada — before a closing barrage of jazzed-up disco hits brought the appreciative audience to its feet.

IF YOU GO

Le Bal de Paris de Blanca Li
Dates: Through Sunday
Venue: Studio theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
www.hk.artsfestival.org