Senegalese dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny is recognised globally as the original mover and shaper behind contemporary African dance. After studying in France in the 1960s, Acogny drew on this experience to blend western classical technique and modern dance with traditional African rhythms and styles to create a unique approach of her own. Over the years, Acogny has received an array of prestigious awards and honours, including France’s Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a London Contemporary Dance and Performance Award, and a New York “Bessie Award”. In 2014, she was also named among the Top 50 Most Influential Africans in the World by pan-African Jeune Afrique magazine. Now in her 70s, the inspiring icon remains as dedicated to her artistic vision as ever, continuing to dance, choreograph and teach. In Hong Kong, she will perform two riveting solo works, both resonating with her characteristic energy.

Senegalese dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny is recognised globally as the original mover and shaper behind contemporary African dance. After studying in France in the 1960s, Acogny drew on this experience to blend western classical technique and modern dance with traditional African rhythms and styles to create a unique approach of her own. Over the years, Acogny has received an array of prestigious awards and honours, including France’s Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a London Contemporary Dance and Performance Award, and a New York “Bessie Award”. In 2014, she was also named among the Top 50 Most Influential Africans in the World by pan-African Jeune Afrique magazine. Now in her 70s, the inspiring icon remains as dedicated to her artistic vision as ever, continuing to dance, choreograph and teach. In Hong Kong, she will perform two riveting solo works, both resonating with her characteristic energy.

Let the passion of West African dance and music sweep you to your feet

“Tlé” means “the Sun” in Jula, a West African language, symbolising the light in the lives of African people.

In this spectacular dance performance, directed by Burkina Faso’s award-winning choreographer Olivier Tarpaga, the diversity of Africa’s rich choreographic heritage is on show, along with vivacious live music. Set in the courtyard of an African king, Tlé powerfully combines the energy and precision of Burkina Faso’s leading dancers, interweaving joyful rhythms and dynamic routines with traditional wrestling, griot singing, and dancing with sacred mask, to bring the excitement of the country’s festive celebrations to Hong Kong.

The talented Tarpaga excels in both music and dance art forms and has a repertoire of styles extending from traditional to contemporary. Over the past 22 years, he has performed and taught in over 50 countries around the world, receiving numerous honours, including the Lester Horton Dance Award and a USA National Dance Project Touring Grant.

Your passport to the vibrant world of West Africa’s Manding people awaits!

“They make you want to move, twitch your hips, dance as freely as if no one were around to see” — The Press of Atlantic City

“Authentic, organic, amazing” — Performing Arts Review, Taiwan

Let the passion of West African dance and music sweep you to your feet

“Tlé” means “the Sun” in Jula, a West African language, symbolising the light in the lives of African people.

In this spectacular dance performance, directed by Burkina Faso’s award-winning choreographer Olivier Tarpaga, the diversity of Africa’s rich choreographic heritage is on show, along with vivacious live music. Set in the courtyard of an African king, Tlé powerfully combines the energy and precision of Burkina Faso’s leading dancers, interweaving joyful rhythms and dynamic routines with traditional wrestling, griot singing, and dancing with sacred mask, to bring the excitement of the country’s festive celebrations to Hong Kong.

The talented Tarpaga excels in both music and dance art forms and has a repertoire of styles extending from traditional to contemporary. Over the past 22 years, he has performed and taught in over 50 countries around the world, receiving numerous honours, including the Lester Horton Dance Award and a USA National Dance Project Touring Grant.

Your passport to the vibrant world of West Africa’s Manding people awaits!

Over My Dead Body
Ugandan playwright Violet Barungi’s works advocate for freedom, empowerment and equal education opportunity for African women. Over My Dead Body concerns issues related to early marriage. Barungi received the British Council New Playwriting Award for Africa and the Middle East for the play.

Death and the King’s Horseman
Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka is the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. His Death and the King’s Horseman is based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria. The play has been lauded as a drama that “goes so deeply into human and superhuman conditions that it cannot be reduced to something that teaches us about breaches between different civilizations”.

A fearless spotlight on the global power struggle beyond the headlines

A British diplomat and his Somali kidnapper become locked in a battle of wills and worldviews over 88 days in an intensely rewarding exploration of idealism, extremism, religion and politics. Sometimes seeing eye to eye, sometimes needling and goading or ablaze with anger at the crossing of red lines, the duo engage in a series of heated debates and thought-provoking conversations that hurtle to the heart of cultural stereotyping and identity. As boundaries between hostage-taker and victim start to blur, the prejudices of the past begin to disappear…

In this award-winning Kenyan play, The Theatre Company maximises the dramatic power of the stage to humanise and rationalise different perspectives, providing an illuminating theatrical space to examine critical real-world issues.

With two Grammys, an Emmy, and many other prestigious awards, Soweto Gospel Choir has taken the international music world by storm, packing leading concert halls worldwide since its establishment in 2002. Over the years, the choral sensation has shared the stage with star singers such as Bono, Diana Ross, John Legend and Celine Dion while those attending performances have included Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and the British royal family. The Choir, famed for its members’ soaring voices, comprises the best vocalists from churches in and around Soweto, the largest black township in South Africa. Moving between African dialects and English, the Choir’s diverse repertoire ranges from spirituals and traditional hymns to songs of freedom from South Africa’s apartheid era and specially arranged pop classics such as Bridge Over Troubled Water. All are given a powerful new vitality through the group’s passionate renditions and amazing harmonies, enhanced by catchy improvised dancing and live percussion that encourage those watching to swing along with the performers.

Athol Fugard (1932-) is one of South Africa’s most influential playwrights, directors and novelists. Over the past six decades, he has written over 30 plays, four movie scripts, two novels and two autobiographies. During this time, he has also received a host of international accolades, including the prestigious Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre and the Praemium Imperiale, a renowned global arts prize awarded by Japan’s imperial family. His incisive works explore social issues, apartheid, and the real lives and struggles of people in South Africa.

Adapted from a true story, The Road to Mecca is considered one of Fugard’s best works. Helen’s husband died 15 years ago and since then the elderly widow has become withdrawn and isolated. Furthermore, she has built up a large collection of sculptures in her garden, all looking toward Mecca. The strait-laced residents of the town are bewildered by such behavior and the local pastor Marius tries hard to put her in an old people’s home. Then Helen’s close friend Elsa, a young school teacher arrives for an unexpected visit, and she sees Helen’s actions from a totally different perspective…While set in South Africa, the drama’s message is universal: can we accept people who are different and allow free spirits the space they need to create?

In this presentation, the Hong Kong Federation of Drama Societies invites established actors to perform the work through play-reading. Eschewing costumes and staging, the production will encourage audience members to liberate their imagination and experience the power of creative freedom.

The genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s shocked the world. At the time, Ery Nzaramba was 15 years old and his “survivor” identity has now become a life-long companion. With the help of a cassette player, he conjures up family, friends, and other people he encountered, taking on a variety of roles in a candid search to comprehend both himself and the country’s story as a whole. Between the humorous and the heart-wrenching, the drama highlights not only the everyday intolerance that lays the groundwork for mass slaughter but also how power and privilege play an inordinate part in survival.