Does Hong Kong have the potential to develop into a global performing arts hub? That was the unwritten question lingering in the air at the first Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo (HKPAX). 

The event wrapped on Oct 18 — the last of the five days of pitching sessions, presentations and performances intended to convince international industry visitors of a favorable answer. 

Today, the city’s status as a nexus for trade and business is, of course, a given, but just a decade ago, not many would have bought into the idea of Hong Kong as a nerve center of theater, music or dance. 

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The inaugural HKPAX was meant to rewrite outdated narratives about the city’s live art offerings. Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee, CEO of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, oozed confidence at the expo’s first Leadership Talk, as she invited the event’s more than 1,600 delegates to check out the program. Once that was done, “I don’t think any of you will consider Hong Kong a cultural desert.” 

“Come and see what we are doing here, and I hope you will agree with us that Hong Kong is doing great things — we are building a bridge, a platform, for East and West cultural exchange,” she said.

East meets West, again? 

While the crossroads and melting-pot metaphors may be beyond tired, delegates were repeatedly reminded that Hong Kong’s unique cultural, geographic and legal framework make it ripe for cultural development. 

As Wilfred Wong Ying-wai, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Culture Commission — a body set up by the local government in 2023 with the goal of promoting private-sector investment in the arts — points out, Hong Kong’s major “advantage is that we are like a window to the world”. 

“Here we see many from the Chinese mainland — arts groups, art practitioners — all coming to Hong Kong. If they want to reach out and connect with global performing arts groups, this is the place. And similarly for global performing arts groups, this is a good place for them to contact Chinese partners. So we are establishing a platform for transaction.” 

For Bill Bragin, executive artistic director of The Arts Center at New York University Abu Dhabi, HKPAX was a chance to explore international productions and artists that could be brought to the Middle East — or, as he likes to call it, “Southwest Asia”. 

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with people that felt very productive,” says the American curator, who previously presented at New York’s Lincoln Center. “The marker of a good conference is who they get to show up, and here that’s of a very high quality — a lot of the people I’m seeing are those that I work with or want to collaborate with.”

The visitors

Away from the trade talks and networking booths, HKPAX presented a raft of new homegrown and overseas productions. Kenneth Fok Kai-kong, chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC), which is behind HKPAX, underlined in his opening address that many of the 60 performances were open to the public. 

More than 300 companies pitching from around the globe were whittled down to just 15 mainstage International Showcases. Highlights included the Finnish-Mexican production Perhaps, Perhaps … Quizas — a highly interactive solo show about a lonely clown. 

Much was left to chance as audience members invited to the stage could change the course of the performance. Caution: Fragile, a playful fable about commercialism and the environment, quirkily told through the medium of two bubble-wrapped beings, presented by Canada’s L’Arriere Scene, also turned out to be particularly noteworthy. 

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An ecstatic reception greeted Denmark’s Uppercut Dance Theater, making its Hong Kong debut with Benched, which saw five gymnastic male bodies paint a moving exploration of human relationships. 

The show’s producer, Maja Bonde Holtze, sounds excited about the abundance and variety of Hong Kong’s performing arts events: “We sometimes struggle with finding a stage for the independent arts in Copenhagen. So it’s nice to have this many venues to choose from in Hong Kong.”

 Alexander Boldachev, a Swiss-Russian harpist and composer who presented a “cultural solidarity” program as part of the expo’s Ground Search section, says, “What I really like here is the atmosphere — it is very relaxed and everyone feels very secure.” He lauds the event’s easygoing vibe that encourages participants “to actually talk to people, not just exchange cards and run away — many expos and trade shows look like a big factory of business cards because nobody has even the time to say hello”. 

The hosts 

As well as showing off Hong Kong’s growing arts infrastructure, HKPAX offered the city’s major performing arts groups the opportunity to prove their worth to the world. 

Besides staging showcases of recent productions, organizations that included the Hong Kong Ballet, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Dance Company, the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra also had the chance to network with guests throughout the week. 

“It’s the first one, so we’re all out to support,” said a director of one the city’s “big nine” arts organizations over canapes and cacophony at the champagne-fueled opening ceremony. Three productions saw Hong Kong artists work with international collaborators to develop work especially for the expo. These include Time in a Bottle, a bold if beguiling conceptual piece described grandly as the “world’s first art exhibition combining rare perfume bottles with music”. 

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Staged in The Box at West Kowloon’s Freespace, the show features 250 rare perfume bottles from Hong Kong composer Leon Ko’s personal collection, arranged in 12 ornate scented narrative displays designed by Japanese set designer Hiroko Matsuo. Each display is accompanied by both a poem and a piece of music composed by Ko, accessed via a QR code. The effect is a mixture of poetry and perfumery, history and memory, sensation and technology. 

Ko considers his HKPAX outing a “great opportunity”, but admits that staging such experimental works locally can be a challenging task. “I think it’s very hard to find artistic talent in Hong Kong,” he adds. “For example, when I audition people, rarely do I find great surprises because we basically know everybody in the circle. Because the city’s population is relatively low, attempts to find talent usually gets one into a culde-sac.”

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“I don’t want to write down to artists because I feel that someday they might catch up to what I’m doing. I think that’s very important for Hong Kong composers to remember: Write to exactly what you want and then you will find somebody who can eventually perform it.” 

The bottom line 

The government awarded the HKADC a sum of HK$42 million ($5.4 million) to run the expo. 

Now the HKADC will have to prove to the government that the inaugural expo was money well-spent to justify a second edition. 

Wong of the Culture Commission says the achievements of the inaugural HKPAX may not be apparent just yet, seeing that it is a means to “a long-term goal” and the beginning of “a long journey”. 

“HKPAX will have to continue to be held for some time before the world recognizes its importance,” Wong says. He adds that both his organization and the government will evaluate the event’s impact on the city’s performing arts sector and the public, as well as on the international cultural circuit before taking a call on whether to go ahead with a second edition. Going by the general vibe of the opening night, though, Wong says he has reason to believe that HKPAX has attracted “overwhelming support from the international community”.