SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 22, 2024, the fully occupied Hong Kong Cultural Theater was packed with applause. The return and grand finale of dance drama Wing Chun at the fourth Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Culture and Arts Festival presented an artistic feast combining martial arts and dance, winning high opinions of Hong Kong audiences. The performance not only showcases the artistic charm of Wing Chun once again, but symbolizes a significant opportunity of cultural exchanges and cooperation in the Greater Bay Area.
Since its debut in Hong Kong in this January, the dance drama has swept across many theaters at home and abroad with its distinctive artistic perspectives, state-of-the-art performance skills, and rich cultural heritage, winning positive response and praises from both domestic and international audiences.
Based on the original edition, this special edition includes more local elements of Hong Kong, and the devotion of Hong Kong team and artists has injected new vitality and creativity into the drama. They collaborated with artists from Shenzhen in an artistic form to promote cultural exchanges and cooperation between GBA cities, and show the diverse integration and common prosperity of artistic communities in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. The drama has received fervent response on the site, and the tickets of all the five shows (including two additional ones) have been sold out.
Like a bright pearl on the glaring crown of GBA culture, Hong Kong is attracting worldwide attention with its unique artistic charm and profound cultural heritage. As a cradle of Kung Fu movies, it has nurtured countless legends of martial arts, where Ip Man carried forward and popularized the Wing Chun boxing. In the cultural exchanges and cooperation for the new era, the city is playing an increasingly important role in contributing to the inheritance and development of Chinese culture.
Fusion of Dance and Martial Arts: A Made-in-Shenzhen Drama with Finest Craftsmanship
This made-in-Shenzhen original dance drama combines two Lingnan's representative intangible cultural heritages of Wing Chun boxing and gambiered Guangdong gauze. Led in by the movie Wing Chun produced in Shenzhen in 1990s, the drama applies the parallel montage of two clues of Wing Chun crew and Master Ip struggling in Hong Kong with seamless switching, integrates classical and modern art forms, and presents an innovative artistic feast of collision and fusion between martial arts and dance.
The dance drama Wing Chun is produced by Shenzhen International Cultural Exchange Association, Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports. As a new cultural highlight of Shenzhen, the drama epitomizes top-notch creative resources across China, and demonstrates the city's charm and spirit.
In the spring of 2023, the dance drama started its tour performance from Shenzhen, a city full of innovation and vitality, and a total of 214 shows in 52 theaters in 42 cities at home and abroad have attracted over 300,000 audiences. It has stepped onto the diversified world stage, and swept across quite a number of domestic and foreign theaters. From "seeking breakthrough" to "going global", it carries forward the essence of excellent Chinese traditional culture, allows the world to feel the charm of Chinese art in an innovative manner, and reflects Shenzhen's ambition and strength of "daring to be first" in the culture industry.
Special Edition: Addition of New Hong Kong Elements
On the original performance, the special edition of the dance drama staged in Hong Kong includes rich new elements created by Hong Kong team and artists, offering refreshing audio-visual enjoyment to audiences.
Feng Jiaxing, the on-site conductor, said that the performance is a great expectation and honor for him to turn the recorded edition into a live band edition. Teamwork has played a critical role in this process.
The rerun dance drama Wing Chun once again ingeniously reproduces Chinese martial and dance arts, which is a vivid practice of cultural exchanges and cooperation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. (This event was organized by the Shenzhen International Cultural Exchange Association.)