School Tour Performance of Child Play:
Kidult Man
Performed|'Rock Community' Art and Culture Group
Dates|March 1st to December 31st
Venue|various primary schools of Macao
Mr. Pan was diagnosed as 'Kidult Man' syndrome. His symptom was entering sleeping mode and falling into inability to give answers when asked questions that possibly belong to the adult world. No one, even Mr. PAN himself knew that when bed time came and after he said ‘good night' to his wife and in particular to his baby bear, and gave out the third sound of snoring, there came a boy poking his head out of Mr. PAN's belly button…
This play, with the use of puppets, colorful silhouettes and stage effects, created a fantastic dream world and told a story of psychological adventure. Exploring the conflict and harmony between the desire for and the refusal to growth, it was a child play targeted not just at the children.
Sky Dragon
Performed|Xiaojiao Drama Study and Promotion Group Dates|March 19th, April 6th to 9th
Venue|Outdoor at Baigechao Park on March 19th,
indoor at Black-Box Theatre from April 6th to 9th
The inspiration came from two short novels of Nose and Dragon by the Japanese author, Ryonosuke Akutagawa. Monk Hui Yin had a very long and big nose which was fabled as having the ability to anticipate the future. However, after he stroke off his nose, this ability was also gone. One day, he unwittingly announced that there would be a dragon ascending into the sky. Well, people still believed him. Both the situation of his village and the mentality of the villagers were fundamentally overturned.
Their Words and My City
Performed|Poetic Dance Group
Dates|March 24th to 25th
Venue|Studio Theatre of Macao Culture Center
Emergence of dots, crossing of lines and entanglement of surfaces, and all these beings.
Dance creativity can never dispense with life. Living in this city where decadence mingles with history and culture, how come that the dancers have developed their feelings for the familiar places? And what kind of feelings are these? Such natural-born diversity has inspired multiple creative possibilities for the choreography. The dancers have transformed themselves into dancing languages for memories and emotions, the stage into canvas, and the bodies into poems. The emitted pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy can be appreciated in the colorful dancing. The overlapping obscurity and reality reflects hard and soft beauties of 'my city' . In another feeling, they can be interpreted as a world of emotions with various warmth degrees that interact with one another and in the way understand one another from different angles. The agile and swift body languages hold the whole world at its breath. To be more down to earth, the dance is better at reflecting the organic combination of different facets of the society, condensing daily life into dancing shadows, and exploring the truth hidden behind.
Street Dance: Maybe One Day
Performed|Macao Dancers' Studio
Dates|April 7th to 8th
Venue|Studio Theatre of Macao Culture Center
Our eyes always looking out into the distance and our hearts are always toiling.
We often have the desire to escape.
We always have the paranoia to run away.
We have words at our lips all day long,‘If I may…', 'If I have…' and 'If I give up…'
Where can the hearts settle?
And where can we find freedom?
Percussion Concert for Kids: Magic Music Kingdom
Performed|Macao Percussion Music Association
Dates|May 27th to 28th
Venue|Macao Gangding Theatre / Theatro Dom Pedro V
To promote local percussion culture, Macao Percussion Music Association carefully prepared Magic Music Kingdom , the percussion concert for kids. It presented multiple pieces of classical cartoon and movie music. The unique and lively features of percussion performance with diverse musical instruments appeal to both children and adults. In particular, the kids may see themselves as brave warriors taking adventures into the music kingdom.
Drifting Shipyard
Performed|Macao Dream Drama Group
Dates|June 25th to August 27th
Venue|Outdoor at Baigechao Park on June 25th
Citadel Park of Flowers from August 19th to 20th
Youhan Park on August 26th and 27th
The ship building dream does not fear its fading in history. Rather, a yard within one's heart may recreate the most beautiful landscape.
It is a story about the Shengli shipyard in the Lizhiwan village. Mr. Tan came from a family with generations of ship building experience. He emerged from an amateur apprentice to an ambitious entrepreneur. Yet the shipyard, built with all his resources, went into flames in a fire disaster and everything had to start over again. 50 years of hardship had printed designs of ships large and small onto his heart and hands. Notwithstanding his refined skills, the ship building industry went downhill and left an empty shipyard. Along with fast urban development, river water level went down too, and big ships could no longer be put to sea.
The child growing up in the shipyard turned into a culture scholar and conducted a study on preserving ship building culture and skills. The child asked, 'How to gauge and deliver accurate curves?' And the father answered, 'With a touch of one's hand.'
How to preserve the vanishing skills? How to inherit that touch of one's hand? Drifting Shipyard would be presented in various areas of Macao. A small-sized mimic shipyard would be established in public places and enable the audience to have a close-quarter engagement with the ship building industry. With Mo Jiahao as its director, and Tan Junye as its culture and history counselor, the show would last 10 rounds and the general public would recap the ship building dream which is now drifting away into history.