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In response to overwhelming public demand, additional performances of the multi-media music theatre performance "Sand . Moon: Jamming Muqam" will be scheduled on November 6 at 3pm and November 7 at 8pm at Kwai Tsing Theatre Black Box Theatre. Tickets are now available at URBTIX outlets.
Featuring JAM from Xinjiang and local theatre practitioner Jessica Yeung, "Sand . Moon: Jamming Muqam" is one of the programmes of the "New Vision Arts Festival" presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The 12 Uyghur Muqams have been listed among UNESCO's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In this adaptation, JAM have refashioned the genre into an international World Music artefact, retelling the traditional love story of Gherib and Sanam, with the benefit of avant-garde, multi-media resources to foreground the contemporary context of performance.
The programme is a creative collaboration between Xinjiang and Hong Kong initiated in Beijing. Xinjiang, the largest "autonomous region" situated in the northwestern-most of China; Hong Kong, a tiny "special administrative region" at China's south-eastern tip. Yet both places have served as central China's main communicative avenue with the outside world, resulting in a deeply rooted cultural hybridity and an ambiguous intimacy with mainstream central Chinese culture. It is this unlikely shared experience that has brought the Xinjiang and Hong Kong creative teams together. The result is a profound aesthetic journey in search of roots, eclecticism and innovation.
Concept of the programme came from Muhpulla of JAM and local theatre practitioner Jessica Yeung. Other members of the creative team include JAM's Muradil, Ibrahim, Yasin, Haydar; and Amy Chan, Enoch Cheung, Fangonei, Madeleine Marie Slavick, Chris Chan, Leung Dont, Sharon Chan and Ziv Chun from Hong Kong.
The five members of JAM originate from different regions of Xinjiang. They specialise in a fusion of Uyghur ethnic music, Spanish Flamenco and Cuban rhythm, while exploring and celebrating the fusion of Arabic, Gypsy-Indian, Turkish influences in these musical forms, expressing a pan-Central-Asian sensibility for passion and freedom, and thereby creating a distinctive World Music sound, which is at once local and global.
"Sand . Moon: Jamming Muqam" will also be staged on November 5 to 6 at 8pm and on November 7 at 3pm at Kwai Tsing Theatre Black Box Theatre with limited seats. Tickets priced at $170 (free seating) are available at URBTIX. The performance will be narrated in English and sung in Uyghur with full Chinese surtitles and English surtitles for lyrics. Meet-the-artists sessions will also be held after all performances.
Half-price tickets are available for full-time students, senior citizens aged 60 and above, people with disabilities and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance recipients. Booking discounts of up to 20% are available for full-price performing arts/film programmes.
Programme brochures are available at URBTIX outlets or at the festival website, www.newvisionfestival.gov.hk.
For programme enquiries, call 2370 1044. Internet bookings can be made at www.urbtix.hk. Credit card telephone bookings can be made on 2111 5999.
Ends/Thursday, September 30, 2010
Issued at HKT 18:46
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