K-Broadway Macau Cultural Centre May 8 Curious, really, to start an arts festival with a dance group that might more appropriately have opened the Oscars. Or was it that Japan's K-Broadway just kept on reminding me of the team events on TV dance competitions? Either way, what they didn't make me think was 'challenging', 'innovative' or 'thoughtful'. Upwards of 20 dancers in Lurex, leather, floaty organza, a veritable kaleidescope of costume changes, kicked, turned and clinched, wiggled and strutted their slinky stuff across the stage of Macau's new Cultural Centre. Their style is a mixture of jazz, hip-hop, be-bop and ballet, ensemble work impressive and deceptively casual, the show occasionally witty. The group performs with enthusiasm and evident dedication, but the showstopper was one man: tap-dancing from Hideboh to The Stripes and Noriyasu. There was none of the schmaltz, no repetitive routines, just sheer energy and skill. K-Broadway, a 15-year-old dance group based in Tokyo, danced to everything from Quincy Jones and Ravel's overplayed Bolero to Janet Jackson and the theme tune from the movie Romeo And Juliet. The acoustics at the Cultural Centre have been widely applauded and I can attest to their effectiveness - I was practically deafened from the blast by the interval. But the main problem was really the length of the programme. They performed 20 numbers. Just a demonstration from the group would have gone a long way. The festival, which runs until May 24, offers the Liaoning Opera House, the Macau Chamber Orchestra and a Chinese film festival. The tourist push seems to be to attract mainlanders, which could explain why the programme was in Portuguese and Chinese only. Again, a curious decision when many visitors to Macau from abroad will be English-speaking. With the centre only partly filled, there seems every reason to review both the line-up and the publicity material.