FOR THE NEXT City Festival, the Hong Kong Fringe Club will do something it has never done before: take a large part of it to another country. Running from January 11 to 27, the annual event will feature a local and international programme lineup, with a special focus on the Hong Kong arts scene to mark the 10th anniversary of the handover. 'That's why next year's spotlight will be on Hong Kong,' says Fringe Club director Benny Chia Chun-heng, referring to the themed segment of the festival that explores urban culture of a city. Previously it has showcased Bergen, Seoul, Honolulu, San Francisco, Vienna and Melbourne. And it is this part of City Festival 2007 - Spotlight Hong Kong - that will travel to Singapore. From February 2 to 10, more than 120 local artists and crew will take part in performances, exhibitions and workshops that aim to give the Lion City a taste of the diverse local art and culture. This project was borne of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cultural Co-operation signed by the Hong Kong and Singapore governments in 2004, aimed at fostering cultural co-operation. Vietnam, the Netherlands, Hungary and South Korea signed a similar MOU. It began in January when Spotlight Singapore was part of this year's City Festival. Spotlight Hong Kong in Singapore is the second half of this collaboration. Chia says the initiative offers local and overseas festival organisers a cost-effective way to showcase their art and artists abroad. 'It'd have cost the Singaporeans a lot more if they were to invite Hong Kong artists over separately and vice versa.' And since the MOU guarantees full government support, the Fringe Club is able to obtain official sponsorship this year: HK$700,000 of its HK$2.7 million budget comes from the Home Affairs Bureau. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department will cover the costs of four of its local productions and provide venues for them. The Fringe Club's overseas partners, including The Arts House @ Old Parliament, will shoulder costs of all the programmes that will be staged in Singapore. Chia says it is to the festival's advantage to have multiple partners 'while keeping the government at arm's length'. And he is pleased that other major arts organisations are willing to chip in for next year's festival - for free. 'In a way this is a very Hong Kong thing,' he says. 'We asked around whether they would want to take part in our festival next year because they all have something to contribute and they agreed. There has been no territorial concern and they just asked us what we'd wanted and got on with it.' These partners include Hong Kong's Academy for Performing Arts, Arts Festival, Arts Centre and International Film Festival. 'We work under tight budget financial constraints and haven't been able to take the highly efficient shopping-list approach to programming,' says Chia. 'Instead, we seek out partners whose expertise we lack.' He says it is like commissioning projects that sit well with the festival, except it incurs no extra costs because these partners are willing to offer help without asking for any financial returns. 'We want to have a programme that showcases a Hong Kong musical protege and the APA recommended student pianist Rachel Cheung Wai-ching and her mentor senior lecturer Eleanor Wong, who will take part in a recital and master class respectively,' Chia says. 'The Hong Kong Art Centre has offered us its independent comics exhibition Comix Magneto. These are areas we have no expertise in.' The rest of the City Festival lineup is diverse, featuring local talents as well as artists from Tokyo, Britain, Germany and Australia. The Bare Stage Project will feature nine contemporary choreographers-dancers including Daniel Yeung, Edwin Lung, Bruce Liu and Justyne Li. Their choreography and dance will be based on music selected by guests including the Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho Chi-ping (Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man), composer Ng Cheuk-yin (Bjork's Triumph of a Heart) and DJ/TV presenter Sammy Leung (Deep Purple's Child In Time). In theatre, London/Tokyo-based Performance Exchange headed by Daniel Foley and Risako Ataka will return with Throne of Blood (Macbeth), an homage to Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa based on the Shakespeare classic. Local group Theatre du Pif will restage Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat, with a strong cast including the company's artistic directors Bonni Chan Lai-chu and Sean Curran, as well as Lee Chun-chow and Victor Pang. Theatre Action, also a Hong Kong-based drama group, is putting US author Charlotte Gilman Perkins' Yellow Wallpaper on stage. Adapted and directed by Mike Ingham and performed by Jessica Yeung, this piece explores the mind of a woman in the grip of a nervous breakdown. On a lighter note, three Australians - Charlie Pickering, Rick Lau and Lyn Shakespeare - will bring their one man/woman standup here, mulling over publishing an autobiography and internet dating. Pianist Warren Wills, a festival regular, will accompany Peter Straker in his tribute performance to Sammy Davis Jnr and Rain Pryor in Divas, a one-woman show that celebrates the life and music of three jazz greats: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. The third cabaret show, Love, Loss and Laughter, will headline Eva Meier from Munich, performing German chansons from 1920s to 1980s. She will be accompanied by pianist Paul Cibis. On the visual arts front, the Fringe Club will stage three exhibitions at its two galleries, featuring works by Craig Au Yeung (photography and collages of popular foods in Hong Kong), Annysa Ng and an installation by Melbourne-born, Rome-based artist Elise Garnaut titled Cat's Kitsch-a-Rome. Colourful and thought provoking, her 3-D piece is a homage to the city's 180,000 feral cats. A highlight will be Art Outing - a series of organised visits to this city's art spaces showcasing homegrown contemporary art, including Fotan Artist Village, Kwun Tong Artist Studios, Cattle Depot Artists' Village, Para/Site Art Space, Shanghai Street Artspace, habitus, UMA G and Fu Tak Building Studios. 'In face of adversity and despite a lack of support, local visual artists always find a way round to pursue what they want to do, which is to create art,' says Chia. 'This programme will reflect that.' City Festival, Jan 11 to 27, free to HK$250. Inquiries: 2521 7251
