Eaton HK 24 Hours Movement Festival

Presented by Eaton HK, Movement Festival was first initiated in 2018 and has hosted two editions in 2019 and 2022. Movement Festival brings performance art to a mixed audience: from performance enthusiasts to passersby, as well as hotel clients, dining guests, and hotel staff. Brought together in the same space either by chance or by their own will, audiences will experience curated movement activations in unusual spaces. Site-specificity lies at the core of the festival. With no stage, performers, audience members and anonymous passersby all share the same space. The constraints of the hotel space require artists to work around the blurred lines between the audience and the artists; performers may decide to attract the crowd’s attention or disappear into their surroundings to manipulate the space between performance and “real life”.

SPEAKING FROM AFAR

This year’s theme “Speaking From Afar” originated from “The Man and the Snake” (Book X, Fable 1, 1678), a fable by French writer Jean de La Fontaine. The moral of the story concludes that people in high places do not listen to reason and believe they are entitled to everything. La Fontaine advises to speak from afar or keep quiet: “And this being so, when you wish to teach the truth to such people, keep out of their reach.”

The theme encapsulates the experience of movement and connects it to the act of speaking. Speaking as a form of movement, through the use or non-use of gestures, is the motive behind each of the performances and interweaves the various forms of expression together in the festival. Addressing the shortcomings of common language between different communities is one of the potentials offered by performance art.

This year, the Movement Festival reverts to a 24-hour format, reminiscent of its inaugural 2019 edition, providing an uninterrupted viewing experience featuring a diverse array of dance styles and performances, ranging from traditional (ballet, Cantonese theater) and popular (Bollywood and flash mob) to internet-inspired (ASMR, mukbang) and conceptual (automatic writing, participatory performance). The 24-hour format offers a durational spectatorship that attends to time as a key element as important as movement. The extension of time is not intended for performers and the audience to endure their physical limits of exhaustion, but to destabilize the internal clock used to discipline their movement and expectations. The 24-hour format opens up curiosity for aesthetic experience by extending the period of attention to others' actions and "accidents", as well as their own. In these observations, we find the beauty of uncertainty over time.

Movement Festival has always been a platform for cultural exchange. This year, we are partnering with regional and Hong Kong arts and cultural organizations, including Alice Theatre Laboratory, Hong Kong Ballet, NOWNESS ASIA, TS Crew, Unlock Dancing Plaza, Yinzi Theater with the support from the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, Current Plans, and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia - Shanghai and Tin Project. Over 50 artists and academics from Hong Kong and overseas are featured in the festival to create over 30 performances, films, lectures, and workshops. This year’s festival will highlight members of different ethnic groups from within Asia and Africa to enrich the program with their traditional dances, including representatives from Asian Migrant Coordinating Body, Africa Center Hong Kong, BEYOND Bollywood, and One Billion Rising HK.

ALL PROGRAMS

Icons and Idols

NOV 23—24 | 4/F Washroom & LG/F Washroom

Exhibition | Julien Jouaud

Julien Jouaud’s work hybridizes different techniques, such as the collection and mixing together different impure elements. These elements are heterogeneous and anomalous, produced and then immediately discarded in a frenetic sense of instantaneity, as a characteristic of our current times and contemporary society.

"Siamese Dreams" Screening & Post-screening Talk

NOV 23 17:00—18:45 | 1/F Kino

Screening & Talk｜ Iv Charbonneau Ching

Aum Neko is a young transgender Thai activist who looks at her country without complacency. Her fight to affirm her identity and her dreams of freedom clashes with the myths of a patriarchal society over which the figure of the King still presides.

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Contemporary Repertoire

NOV 23 19:00—19:30 | G/F Lobby

Ballet & Talk | Hong Kong Ballet

The Hong Kong Ballet will perform short pieces from its repertoire, followed by a conversation with artistic director Septime Weber and the dancers

Isn’t this just divine, Ethel!

NOV 23 19:30—20:00 | G/F Lobby

Physical Theatre | Agnese Perri & Reggie Yip

Incorporating mask, movement, sound and gesture, Isn’t this just divine, Ethel? is a playful work that asks us to connect directly with creatures of a time stood still.

Drifting Among Crossings

NOV 23 20:00—20:40 | G/F—B1/F Staircase

Dance | Marah Arcilla & Sylvie Cox

Stairs: you go up, and you go down. They are a place of transition, a space full of momentum. Sylvie and Marah explore the movements and emotions involved in retracing memories within such a public space, while also delving into themes of searching, belonging, and existing in a state of in-between.

Colors of India

NOV 23 20:45—21:00 | G/F Lobby

Community Dance | BEYOND Bollywood

BEYOND Bollywood is presenting the latest Bollywood dance with energetic beats, along with the folk dances of Gujarat and Rajasthan states in India. These performances celebrate themes of love, joy, and the vibrancy of life.

Composing Ever New Polyphonic Laments for Ever Changing Spaces

NOV 23 21:00—21:30 | G/F Lobby

Performance | Lara Dâmaso

A spontaneous composition of a polyphony of many voices, of the artist, of one another, all coexisting within artist's body, within oneself.

Practice

NOV 23 21:45—22:00 | 4/F Music Room

Dance | Li De

For a long time, martial arts abandoned actual combat as its primary purpose, and developed a training system in which weapons were only used as extensions of the body. Practice use stick as paintbrush in motion resonating with Philip Glass's musical structure, continuously outlines circles one after another, symbolizing the repetition in training.

African Music Experience

NOV 23 22:00—22:15 | 4/F Music Room

Music Performance | Africa Center Hong Kong

Africa Center Hong Kong is presenting a series of African music experiences.

Colors of India

NOV 23 22:15—22:30 | 4/F Music Room

Suite for 4 performers

NOV 23 22:30—23:10 | 4/F Music Room

Site-specific Performance | Marie-Caroline Hominal

A site-specific performance specially created for the Music Room and its stage. In this work, Marie-Caroline Hominal explores the thematics of party and the relationship to the body(ies) it provokes.

silence/deep Part I

NOV 23 23:10—23:55 | 4/F Music Room

Multimedia Performance｜Nathalie Rothkoff, KayTV, Maggie Han & Yang Hao

Engaged in the creation of a common abstract work, “silence/deep” combines painting/drawings, music, video, dance and poetry, allowing densities and shifts between sound, movement and image and vice versa like an endless accumulation.

Modification of Space with Bare Hands

NOV 24 00:00—00:20 | 4/F Music Room

Performance | Constantin Leu

New commissioned work for Movement Festival 2024, created by artist in residence Constantin Leu, with support from The Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, and Current Plans.

Sweet Cosmic City, ASMR Dream

NOV 24 00:20—01:20 | 4/F Music Room

Multimedia Performance | Elisa Duca

What do objects do late at night when they stop being in the flux of everyday life? ASMR Dream summons the agency of objects found in urban landscapes. Performance and video evoke their strangeness, fragility and strength by exploring their soundscape

Practice

NOV 24 01:30—01:45 | 4/F—G/F Escalator

Bedtime Stories

NOV 23 23:00—00:00, NOV 24 01:00—02:00, 03:00—04:00 | G/F Lobby

1-on-1 Participatory Performance | Ching Chu

A participatory conceptual performance invites visitors or audiences to rest in a bed set up in the hotel lobby, where unconventional bedtime stories are shared bedside, detailing real-life individual experiences of hardships.

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Practice of Pleasure

NOV 24 02:15—03:00 | B1/F The Astor

Durational Performance | Jas Lin

How might the act of eating, freed from “table manners,” reclaim public space as a portal of shared intimacy and sensuality? Practice of Pleasure disrupts the choreographies of public dining spaces, reimagining appetite and consumption as unmediated by social scripts.

The Temporality of a Song

NOV 24 03:00—03:30 | G/F Lobby

Chinese Theater | Chin Yin

Performed in different times and contexts by different bodies the same careful recreation of imaginations of the past - In a quiet hotel at night, Cantonese theater artist Chin Yin will take us on a journey to reflect on the passage of time through a song.

silence/deep Part II

NOV 24 03:30—04:00 | B1/F The Astor

City Bow

NOV 24 04:00—08:00 ｜from G/F Lobby to hotel neighborhood

Sound Performance | Lawrence Lau Hiu Kong

City Bow encourages participants to engage with their surroundings in a novel way, uncovering the hidden acoustic potential of everyday urban structures.

A Dance For You With the Song That Made You Cried

NOV 24 04:00—05:00 | G/F Lobby

1-on-1 Participatory Performance | Joseph Lee

Take a song that makes you sad in exchange for a dance just for you.

Take me. I am now ready to go

NOV 24 04:00—06:00 | from G/F Lobby to various spots in the hotel

Performance | Sonia Wong

Inspired by the artist's dream, of a very old woman with all her female descendants, encounter Death and bid farewell to their lives and memories.

memo-random

NOV 24 05:00—06:00 | G/F Lobby

Performance & Installation | Wai Yin

Draws connections between mental reminiscences and physical sensations through real-time automatic writing, the artist invites the audience to witness and engage in this exploration of documenting their physical connection to the past.

Throw and Catch

NOV 24 07:30—07:40, 08:30—08:40, 09:30—09:40 | LG/F Astor Plaza

Performance | Sammi Chui

This performance involves two participants in a relationship, who must accomplish three goals: 1. Estimate the distance between the performers. 2. Synchronize their movements to facilitate an “exchange.” 3. Sustain the task for as long as possible.

Movements of All Sorts: Performance Art as Movement and Matter

NOV 24 10:00—11:00 | G/F Lobby

Lecture | Nicky Runge

The lecture will go through examples of performance art throughout history, and look into how movement has been used as a key concept in performance art to explore displacement in terms of gender, language, and situatedness.

On the Edge of Love and Pain, We Breathe Together

NOV 24 11:00—11:40 | G/F Lobby

Performative Workshop | Paula Wong Po-na

The workshop commences with stretching exercises and transitions into moments of stillness, allowing participants to explore sensations of pain, pleasure, and tension.

Isn’t this just divine, Ethel!

NOV 24 11:45—12:15 | G/F Lobby

Composing Ever New Polyphonic Laments for Ever Changing Spaces

NOV 24 12:15—13:00 | G/F Lobby

Performance | Lara Dâmaso

A spontaneous composition of a polyphony of many voices, of the artist, of one another, all coexisting within artist's body, within oneself.

memo-random

NOV 24 13:00—14:00 | G/F Lobby

Performance & Installation | Wai Yin

Ongoing

NOV 24 13:00—13:15 | G/F Lobby

Dance | TS Crew

Laughing is spontaneous.
Moving is impulsive.
When we let movement flow, adventure ensues. Let’s live in the movement and laugh loudly and without judgment!

Migrant Domestic Workers Flashmob

NOV 24 13:25—13:35 | G/F Lobby & LG/F Food Hall

Community Co-creation: Our Journey

NOV 24 1345—1405 | G/F Lobby

Dance | Sylvie Cox & Migrant Domestic Workers

Movement Festival has invited a group of nine migrant domestic workers from different ethnic and regional backgrounds living and working in Hong Kong to co-create a new dance piece with choreographer Sylvie Cox, which will be premiered at the Festival. This collaboration narrates their migration stories, joys, and struggles, drawing inspiration from regional dance traditions and their individual dance practices.

Ongoing

NOV 24 14:15—14:30 | G/F Lobby

Dance | TS Crew

Laughing is spontaneous.
Moving is impulsive.
When we let movement flow, adventure ensues. Let’s live in the movement and laugh loudly and without judgment!

Throw and Catch

NOV 24 14:30—14:40, 15:30—15:40 | LG/F Astor Plaza

Movement as Medicine: A Path to Health and Wellness

NOV 24 14:30—15:00 | G/F Lobby

Lecture | Vissakha Wallace

Delve into the science behind movement and its often overlooked advantages for mental and physical well-being, emphasizing the importance of fostering a culture of movement to bolster mutual support on this journey

Practice of Pleasure

NOV 24 15:00—15:45 | B1/F The Astor

Hong Kong Storytelling 2024

NOV 24 15:00—16:25 | LG/F Food Hall

Storytelling | Alice Theatre Laboratory

Welcome to Hong Kong Storytelling 2024! The talented storytellers will unveil captivating tales about Yau Tsim Mong from ancient to modern times.

Community Co-creation: Our Journey

NOV 24 16:15—16:35 | G/F Lobby

Drifting Among Crossings

NOV 24 16:45—17:25 | G/F—B1/F Staircase

Modification of Space with Bare Hands

NOV 24 17:25—17:45 | G/F Lobby

In Their Skin

NOV 24 17:45—19:00 | 1/F Kino

Screening & Talk | NOWNESS ASIA

NOWNESS ASIA offers a selection of three short films of compelling imaginations of queer and femme artists, celebrating performers who use their craft to rethink ways of being, speaking, and relationships with communities.

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CREDITS

Presenter:
Eaton HK

Partners:
Alice Theatre Laboratory
Africa Center Hong Kong
Asian Migrants Coordinating Body
BEYOND Bollywood
Hong Kong Ballet
NOWNESS ASIA
One Billion Rising HK
TS Crew
Unlock Dancing Plaza
Yinzi Theater

Supporters:
Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau
Current Plans
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia - Shanghai
Tin Project

Festival Directors:
Joseph Chen (Eaton HK)
Alice Rensy

Festival Curators:
Nicky Runge
Sonia Wong

Festival Producers:
Michael Li
Kelvin Yiu (Eaton HK)

Festival Designer:
Ho Yuet Dong (Eaton HK)

Festival Coordinators:
Li De
So Wing Kiu Maggie

Festival Observers:
Helen Leung
Rik Yu

Special thanks to Eaton HK team James Acey, Stephanie Chik, Cheryl Chow, Ceci Fung, Au Tze Long, Winky Kwan and Glad Chan.