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Hong Kong Xiqu Overview 2020
Siu Leung LI and Siu Wah YU
2020, Hong Kong Chinese opera’s year of mischance (for that matter, same to all performing arts and other arts fields). Since early 2020, COVID-19 quickly turned a global pandemic causing lockdowns of almost everything. A year back, 2019, Hong Kong Chinese opera enjoyed a blossoming year beginning with the January grand opening of the magnificent West Kowloon Cultural District Xiqu Centre. 2020, the industry was like being thrown into an apocalyptic dystopia of contagion. New productions, large scale shows, ritual drama performances, overseas and non-local troupes’ visits, educational and promotional activities were all drastically shrunk, rescheduled, relocated to virtual space, or simply cancelled. COVID-19 cancelled culture, in a sense, amongst other things in everyday life. Hong Kong Chinese opera practitioners have been syncretic, flexible, and enduring in face of the devastating pandemic. Some turned more to social media platforms, some grabbed any chance of face-to-face meeting live audiences whenever circumstances allowed, and some strived for raising fund to help sustain the industry.
With COVID-19 entering the stage in the role of a game changer, Hong Kong Xiqu Overview 2020 opens with a general review chapter, followed by another chapter listing the year’s important events in the shadow of the pandemic. In the third chapter Lum Man Yee traces the origins and transformations of ritual drama, consulting primitive sources as far back to the 11th century, and examines the current existential conditions of this old tradition. Based on her fieldwork in 2019 and 2020, Lum examines how the local Chinese opera industry has been debilitated by COVID-19, and the industry’s response to this incessant pandemic with various tactics of survival. Chan Yee Lam in the fourth chapter reflects on the private sector’s contributions to the transmission of the art of Chinese opera. Attention was paid to the pandemic’s impact on these private groups’ survival. Chan summarized their technological tackling of the challenges, marking aspects of how the transmission of Chinese opera was still being managed in the time of COVID-19. The last chapter by Arthur Pang reviews Hong Kong Chinese opera’s artistic-administrative practices, contrasting the Chinese opera programs in 2019 and 2020 with respect to social stability and instability, and mapping the strategies of programming regional Chinese operas of the Chinese Opera Festival and the Xiqu Centre.
A stubborn cultural structure in Chinese opera for 800 years (counting from the maturation of traditional Chinese theatre in the Mongolian dynasty from the 13th century) is that, unlike European drama that has privileged tragedy since the ancient Greeks, there is necessarily, almost always a happy ending. Even when occasionally there emerged a play with a sad ending in which good people suffered and got unjustly killed in tragic sublime, the dejected ending will be altered and replaced by a comic resolution in later adaptations with a full happy reunion. Thus lived Hong Kong Chinese opera.
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Hong Kong Xiqu Overview 2019
Siu Leung LI and Siu Wah YU
Hong Kong Xiqu Overview 2019 is a project supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. The HKADC’s annual Overview series includes volumes on dance, theatre, music, and xiqu (Chinese opera). The overviews aim at recounting and documenting the important events, issues, and changes around individual art forms in the year.
The ebook Hong Kong Xiqu Overview 2019 is organized in two parts: “overview” and “special topics.”
The first two chapters constitute the overview part whereas each of the other three chapters deals with one topic that was selected for its significance relevant to the year being retold.
The first chapter “Hong Kong Chinese Opera Event Files 2019: A Year of Celebrations and Restlessness“ files the big events around the two focuses of jollification and unrest that shaped the year 2019 as special for the city’s Chinese opera. The second chapter “Selected Events, Hong Kong Chinese Opera 2019” is a compendium to the first chapter, listing notable events and activities in the eight categories of new productions; other significant productions; regional Chinese opera productions other than Cantonese opera; events celebrating the 10th anniversary of Cantonese opera’s entering on the UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; books publications, film, TV, online media; training and promotion; programs and events cancelled due to the anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests; others.
The three special-topic chapters cover three subjects; namely, the Xiqu Centre that opened in January 2019, genres of Cantonese operatic music, a survey of 14 books on Chinese opera published in 2019.
The chapter “Before Xiqu Centre, After Xiqu Centre” provides a larger social-cultural context for the coming into being of the Xiqu Centre in 2019. Putting the discussion in historical perspectives, the chapter examines issues of Chinese opera venues, the government’s cultural polices regarding performance venues, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s Chinese opera programming strategies, and the Xiqu Centre’s potential in effecting changes in the city’s translocal Chinese opera ecology.
“Four Genres of Cantonese Operatic Music Revisited: Daibayin, Narrative Singing, Cantonese Music, Cantonese Operatic Tunes Sung in Official Mandarin” is an ethnomusicological chapter reviewing the recent history of Cantonese music, Cantonese opera music, and Chinese music training to illustrate the complexity and diversified origins of music in Cantonese opera, with special reference to the 2019 musical event of “Guangdong Quadrangle” (an event in Hong Kong’s annual Chinese Opera Festival 2019) as an effort demonstrating the early forms of Cantonese music and Cantonese opera music.
“A Survey of 2019 Books on Chinese Opera,” the last chapter in the volume, overviews the numerous Chinese opera publications of the year—a year that saw fruitful and bountiful output in artistic and academic studies of the art form, covering topics from artists’ biographies, ritual drama, Cantonese operatic music and teaching materials, history of Chinese opera, Cantonese opera repertoire, textual studies of traditional Chinese drama, to Cantonese opera films. The chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to each of the selected 14 books, followed with comments from academic research and practical performance perspectives in the translocal context of Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan.
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香港戲曲概述 2019
Siu Leung LI (李小良) and Siu Wah YU (余少華)
《香港戲曲概述2019》是由香港藝術發展局資助的項目，出版目標旨在「呈現及記錄個別藝術範疇在年內的重要議題、現象和變化」。香港藝術發展局資助的年度概述，在表演藝術範疇還包括音樂、舞蹈、劇場。
為此，我們以「回顧」及「專題」為重心策劃年度概述的內容，既要收錄香港戲曲重要的現象、事件，提供扼要年度概覽；也要帶出一些業界關注、或對行業別具意義的課題，引領讀者進入當中的討論，從而前瞻行業的未來；還要將外在環境變化與這些課題結合，提供實在的社會文化脈胳，讓讀者理解這些課題的時代意義。
《香港戲曲概述2019》「回顧」部分，卷首收錄年度內香江梨園的重要事件，除了舞台上重要、新編的製作、傳播媒介（電視、電影、書籍等）相關出品，以及影響業界生計、營運模式的重要事件，亦一併收錄，讓讀者掌握繁花舞榭、歌台曲韻背後的脈膊。而「專題」部分，編輯組則選取香港戲曲業界的重要課題，包括「粵劇音樂/中國音樂」、「表演場地」以及「專著出版」等。這些文章全都呼應2019年業界的實況，從年度內舉辦的音樂及舞台節目出發，以2019年西九戲曲中心開幕為焦點，展開討論；又羅列和述介2019年內與戲曲相關的衆多專著出版，反映豐碩的戲曲論述和研究成果。
《香港戲曲概述2019》希望為業界的努力、奮鬥留下記錄，亦讓更多人了解「香港戲曲」領域內多樣性的課題。
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香港戲曲概述 2020
Siu Leung LI (李小良) and Siu Wah YU (余少華)
《香港戲曲概述2019》及《香港戲曲概述2020》是由香港藝術發展局資助的項目，出版目標旨在「呈現及記錄個別藝術範疇在年內的重要議題、現象和變化」。香港藝術發展局資助的年度概述，在表演藝術範疇還包括音樂、舞蹈、劇場。
為此，我們以「回顧」及「專題」為重心策劃年度概述的內容，既要收錄香港戲曲重要的現象、事件，提供扼要年度概覽；也要帶出一些業界關注、或對行業別具意義的課題，引領讀者進入當中討論，從而前瞻行業未來；還要將外在環境變化與這些課題結合，提供實在的社會文化脈胳，讓讀者理解這些課題的時代意義。
兩部概述的「回顧」部分，卷首彙集年度內香江梨園的重要事件，除了舞台上重要、新編的製作、傳播媒介（電視、電影、書籍等）相關出品，以及影響業界生計、營運模式的重要事件，亦一併收錄，讓讀者掌握繁花舞榭、歌台曲韻背後的脈膊。而「專題」部分，編輯組則選取香港戲曲業界的重要課題，包括「神功戲/儀式習俗」、「粵劇音樂/中國音樂」、「坊間戲曲培訓/推廣」、「節目策劃」、「專著出版」以及「表演場地」。
這些文章全都呼應2019及2020年業界實況，例如陳子晉及彭斯筵分別從年度內舉辦的音樂及舞台節目出發，以西九戲曲中心開幕為焦點，展開討論（〈重訪粵劇音樂四種〉、〈戲曲中心的前世今生〉）。陳苡霖則從書籍及技術傳承兩方面著手，分別羅列、述介2019年內與戲曲相關的眾多專著出版，以及審視坊間諸多團體為培育戲曲新秀的付出，反映社會上個人、團體從不同方位促進行業成長及發展。部分文章更在該研究領域提出創見，如林萬儀的〈「非遺」保護策略：COVID-19前後的香港神功戲〉，便細緻釐清「神功戲」的意涵，對了解此項具悠久歷史的儀式習俗極具意義。
2019、2020年，有曰世界經歷「百年未有之大變局」，業界值此期間的努力、奮鬥，正是「千磨萬擊還堅勁，任爾東西南北風」，亦是兩部概述作為年度紀錄意義之所在。
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