CAN Festival 2020
With theatre, music, dance, comedy, circus and more, the contemporary British Chinese arts festival returns for its second year
· Music events Triptych and Coalesce clash contemporary with classical music from the East and West, with Chinese percussion meeting grime and Classical Chinese music fusing with DJing
· Comedian Nigel Ng will be performing his Best Newcomer Award nominated show Culture Shocked
· The festival takes place at London venues including the Southbank Centre, Shoreditch Town Hall, Rich Mix, Kings Place and Soho Theatre
3 – 23rd February 2020
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From augmented reality to immersive dining, from ballet to waacking, from comedy to clowning, the festival exploring contemporary British Chinese experiences is returning for a bigger, bolder year of performance art. Delving into the past, present and future of the British Chinese population, the festival showcases a diverse wealth of talent celebrating innovation and exploring identity.
Highlights include:
In theatre, Augmented Chinatown 2.0 is an immersive augmented reality world on your phone that takes you on a tour around Chinatown. The dramatic stories of the area’s many and varied former inhabitants can be accessed at any time of day. Meanwhile, following last year’s Citizens of Nowhere, Overheard takes place in a Chinese restaurant (15 Feb). As the audience eat, through their headphones they hear the conversation between two waitresses and their manager, each from strikingly different Chinese backgrounds - Hong Kong, Singapore, and China – as they negotiate the cracks in contemporary Chinese identity.
The festival’s music offering includes Triptych (Shoreditch Town Hall 12 – 13 Feb) a three-part performance bringing together music, dance and word. Clashing classical music with Chinese percussion, grime and electronica, and ballet with popping, waacking and ambient footwork, Triptych explores otherness and hidden identities, celebrating the power behind the female body and voice. Meanwhile Coalesce (Kings Place 19 Feb) captures the spirit of both classical Chinese instruments and contemporary electronic music. Destinations is Belle Chen’s new audio-visual show, created in collaboration with designer Nick Robertson (Coldplay, Brian Eno), real-time visual performer, Mario Radev (nominee Grand Jury Prize - Sundance Film Festival), and lighting designer, Marty Langthorne (Sadler’s Wells, Dickie Beau).
For some light relief, Comedian Nigel Ng will be performing his Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019 Best Newcomer Award nominated debut show Culture Shocked (Soho Theatre 3 – 8 Feb), taking audiences on a joyous romp through his life in the UK as a Malaysian immigrant.
In dance and circus, Invisible Harmony (Southbank Centre 4 Feb) reflects on the East Asian experience of living in the west, and Long Shot (Jackson’s Lane 14 Feb) is a part non-verbal circus performance, part behind the scenes ‘making of’, a catapultastic evening of clowning, contraptions, comedy and courage. Closing the festival, Ways of Being Together (Shoreditch Town Hall 22 Feb) sees Jo Fong drawing together over thirty performers from across London for a one-off spontaneous, dynamic mass movement of bodies and lives.
The festival also includes children’s theatre shows Boh Boh’s New Friends and X+Y= (The Tree of Objects), song and paper cutting installation Walls, and a night of queer performance Queering Now.
CAN Artistic Director, An-Ting Chang said, “I’m delighted to announce the return of CAN Festival for 2020. Following the success of our inaugural festival in 2019, our 2020 festival will be a bigger, bolder and braver celebration of the work being produced by Chinese heritage artists in the UK today.
“How do we, Chinese artists in the UK, look at our Chinese heritage? Where did these artists and the community start from and what are they doing nowadays? Who counts as Chinese? What is ‘Chineseness’? How are we coping with the rapidly changing situation in China and the diaspora?
“Chinese Arts Now is going from strength to strength and we can’t wait to share the diverse and innovative programme we’ve created. We hope that it will give you a new perspective on what ‘Chinese’ means in relation to the arts.”
Listings information
3 – 23 February 2020
Overheard | A CAN Production
Theatre
You're in a Chinese restaurant. You start to overhear snatches of conversation. It's the waitresses. Between courses of your meal you hear urgent whispers of conspiracy, someone hiding in the back, alliances, betrayals. Drawing on contemporary crises in the Chinese world, Overheard is a unique theatrical experience that breaks down barriers between audiences and performers. Three women of strikingly different Chinese backgrounds – Hong Kong, Singapore, and China – negotiate the cracks in contemporary Chinese identity. With fault-lines across politics, culture, and language, the only thing that's certain is that being Chinese isn't the same for every Chinese person. Written by Joel Tan and directed by Mingyu Lin.
Nigel Ng – Culture Shocked | Off the Kerb Productions Soho Theatre, 3rd – 8th Feb, 7pm
Comedy
In his debut show, Nigel Ng takes you on a joyous romp through his life in the UK as a Malaysian immigrant. Can he retain his cultural identity under the seduction of the Western world? Or will he succumb to it and start enjoying the bland food served at Wagamama’s?
Nigel made his TV debut in 2018 on Comedy Central’s Rob Delaney’s Stand Up Central, shortly followed by Comedy Central’s Roast Battle.
He had an incredible debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year with his sell out show Culture Shocked, and to top it off, he was nominated for the prestigious Best Newcomer Award.
Invisible Harmony无形的和谐
Dance and Spoken Word
It was a huge act of courage
By the man
Who looked like a small boy
On the small screen
Which made the Big Tank
Look like a small toy
But he had his back to the screen
So he wasn’t known
And he wasn’t seen.
Daniel York Loh (Forgotten遗忘) reflects on the East Asian experience living in the West, when huge geopolitical moments are erased from history and become merely a backdrop for Western media and the white lens. Julia Cheng (House of Absolute) brings his words to life through her poignant choreography and dialogue, supported by spoken word artist Enxi Chang.
The performance will be followed by a panel discussion of the piece and the broader discourse around artists, representation and re-mediation of the imagery of East Asian political resistance.
Augmented Chinatown 2.0 | A CAN Production Newport Place, Chinatown, App available from 5th Feb
Theatre
Delve deeper into the history of Chinatown in this ground-breaking interactive work combining Augmented Reality technology, music and storytelling. Explore Donald Shek’s immersive augmented reality world on your phone as you walk the streets of modern-day Chinatown listening to the dramatic stories of some of the area’s many and varied former inhabitants. This ambitious, mesmerising piece lets you create your own audio drama journey through an area of London that is both constantly evolving yet steeped in fascinating layers of history. Written by Joel Tan and directed by An-Ting Chang.
Walls | Chloe Wing
11th Feb Exhibition Opening & performance by the artist
Visual Art/Installation
“I was not allowed to grow properly…” A lack of autonomy is a struggle for some people and this can be a mental, physical and social predicament.
Walls is an atmospheric and immersive microcosm. Chloe Wing’s songs and paper cutting installations depict psychological cages that are confessional like a diary. They deal with themes such as self-consciousness, anxiety, alienation, frustration, the psyche and memory. Cut out installations contain hidden thoughts, and veils obscure the human physicality in order to create a space where music and words are at the forefront.
Community is a place where we feel we need to belong. Where age, gender, identity, ethnicity and appearance play a huge part in our everyday views, judgments and interactions. These classifications can be uninformative and segregating. Wing’s works are humane, cathartic and psychosocial, highlighting the influence of history and conventions upon the mind and emotional/ mental health.
Lighthouse | Hazel Lam
Circus/Dance
Lighthouse is an expressionist dance and circus piece exploring themes on being consumed by plastic and your own desires. Hazel Lam works with an unusual material - PVC plastic tubes as props, as a partner and as an aerial apparatus in this multidisciplinary work combining dance, circus and object theatre. This piece aims to highlight the power in gentleness, or what we usually perceive as feminine movement qualities. PVC stretches considerably. Since it is the only thing keeping me from falling to the ground, will the strands of plastic hold my weight, particularly considering the physicality with which I manipulate them? Do I trust them to? How much torture can they bear before they snap?
Queering Now
Multiple art forms
Queering Now is curated by Whiskey Chow, Sha Li, Burong Zeng with Chinese Arts Now. It amplifies the marginalized voices of Chinese Queer that are situated in a multiplicity of social contexts beyond specific nationality and political borders, and explores the notion of 'Chinese' and 'Chinese Queer'.
The programme features award winning animations by Wang Haiyang, a reading weaving speculative fiction with personal histories by Victoria Sin, and Whiskey Chow’s sold-out performance The Moon is Warmer than the Sun. LI YILEI will present an experimental sound work - Your Figures Are Muted, and the night will be ended by a DJ set including Chooc Ly Tan.
Queering Now celebrates diversity and reflects different approaches to the cultural heritage of the East Asian queer diaspora, synthesising contemporary queer Asian voices through live performance, sound, films and a mass queer party.
BOH BOH’S NEW FRIENDS Boh Boh’s New Friends | Little Bean Theatre
Little Angel Theatre 8th – 9th Feb, 11.30am & 2.30pm
Children’s theatre
Boh Boh finds himself unique and different from others, will he be able to make new friends? After last year’s success, Little Bean is coming back to CAN Festival with a brand-new interactive adventure that allows families to explore the galaxy together with our friend Boh Boh the alien. We sing and dance through space, expanding Cantonese vocabulary, working on motor skills and most of all having fun! This is a bilingual performance, suitable for children aged 3-6 years old and accompanying adults.
X+Y= (The Tree of Objects) | Natalie Wong
Children’s theatre
Two strangers both alike in dignity enter a stage of ruin. Unassuming of each other’s presence, they set up home. They quickly learn of each other’s existence and embark on a series of events in the attempt to claim the space as their own. How will they negotiate their way to sharing this space?
The Tree of Objects is a music and movement adventure to discover how we can contribute to preserving our planet through recycling and prolonging the shelf life of objects. Experience the world with these two strangers as they learn that one person’s trash is another’s treasure.
This is a children’s theatre work-in-progress by The Orang Collectif.
CAN Scratch Night
Performance Art
Echo | Xie Rong
Echo is a new performance work that reflects on the artist’s past. It mines her own experiences of childhood, youth and motherhood – and those of her female ancestors. She is a story-teller. There will be action, music and spoken words. Objects are slowly unveiled, juxtaposed with personal narratives. The piece explores identity, family, sorrow and roots.
Lucia Tong |Vegan Gluten Free
Vegan Gluten Free follows a tiger mom in an IG world as she struggles to keep up with the Joneses while struggling to keep her sanity. The story explores who we are behind our picture perfect Instagram realities and queries if endless Google questioning will save us or be the end of us. Vegan Gluten Free navigates the minefield of what it means to be a good mother in today’s society, while also visiting different cultural preconceptions of child rearing, a mother’s role in historical contexts and mental well-being.
Triptych | Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Beibei Wang, The Grime Violinist, MC Lady Lykez
Shoreditch Town Hall 12th-13th Feb, 7pm & 9pm
Music
The ultimate culture clash – classical music meets Chinese percussion, grime and electronica, each step taken with poise and finesse as ballet meets popping, waacking and ambient footwork.
In a 3-part performance bringing together music, dance and word, Triptych is a movement exploring otherness and hidden identities, celebrating the power behind the female body and voice. Featuring Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang, the Grime Violinist + MC Lady Lykez, with dance from female powerhouse House of Absolute, Triptych remoulds the concert and theatre experience as an immersive multidisciplinary installation, set in The Ditch, basement spaces of Shoreditch Town Hall.
Jasmin Kent Rodgman is an artist whose work traverses the worlds of classical music, electronics, world music and sound design. A bold voice of her generation, her work pushes the boundaries of the musical experience, often built around themes of gender and race, exploring ‘otherness’ and featuring exciting artistic collaborations spanning poetry, dance and film.
Triptych is commissioned by Chinese Arts Now
Long Shot | PanGottic
Circus
When failure is NOT an option, what could possibly go wrong?
Join us for a catapultastic evening of clowning, contraptions, comedy and courage, as one man’s belief in the near impossible is put to the test. Part non-verbal circus performance, part behind the scenes ‘making of’, Long Shot will have you on the edge of your seat. Or hiding behind it. Either way, it’s going to be a blast.
PanGottic is an international award-winning company who perform on the street, in theatres and wherever there is an audience. Our work mixes circus, physical theatre and clowning to make shows that are accessible for all.
Blowin’ in the Wind | Company Nil, directed by Daniel Phung, Rich Mix, 13th-14th Feb 7.30pm
Dance
Chinese Arts Now presents Daniel Phung & Company Nil’s performance of Blowin’ in the Wind.‘Blowin In The Wind’ is a powerful and dynamic dance theatre piece addressing the complexity of the current patriarchal society, it challenges our perspective on ‘power’. Four characters who are forced to place their ‘power’ within patriarchy, use mind blowing Contemporary and Hip Hop dance to take you through multiple episodes of masculinity: Sensitivity, emotion, conflict, aggression and adolescence. It is an emotional response to these following questions:
What is masculinity?
Does masculinity exist?
What is cultural masculinity?
Does cultural masculinity exist?
Blowin' in the Wind is commissioned by Chinese Arts Now
Destinations | Belle Chen
Music
Belle Chen is one of the most uncategorisable artists of her generation, traversing the realms of classical, avant-garde, electronica, world, and sound art.
Destinations is Chen’s new audiovisual show, created in collaboration with designer Nick Robertson (Coldplay, Brian Eno), realtime visual performer, Mario Radev (nominee Grand Jury Prize - Sundance Film Festival), and lighting designer, Marty Langthorne (Sadler’s Wells, Dickie Beau).
Inspired by nature and the process of desertification, glacier melt, wildfire, and coral bleaching, the stage transforms into an all-encompassing environment through live-visuals, as the pianist live-paints a journey through shifting environments around the world: from the Gobi Desert to the Great Barrier Reef.
Destinations is commissioned by Chinese Arts Now
Supported by Arts Council England and Help Musicians Fund
Coalesce | A CAN Production
CAN Collective: An-Ting Chang, Charlie Cawood, Cheng Yu, Wang Xiao, DJ QuestionMark
Music and poetry
Join Chinese Arts Now for a wonderful night featuring the talents of post-90s Chinese poet Yu Yoyo and CAN
Collective musicians Cheng Yu, Wang Xiao, Charlie Cawood, DJ QuestionMark and An-Ting Chang.
Coalesce promises to be a captivating celebration of all the senses, blending the compelling voices of Yu Yoyo and AK Blakemore with new music that captures the spirit of both classical Chinese instruments and contemporary electronic music.
Produced by Chinese Arts Now in partnership with Poetry Translation Centre, and presented as part of CAN 2020 Festival.
Ways of Being Together | Jo Fong
Dance
Ways of Being Together is a celebration of possibility. A testament to the belief that amazing things can be created with people we barely know. That communities can emerge, remake themselves and be enriched.
Commissioned by Chinese Arts Now for CAN 2020 Festival, Ways of Being Together draws together over forty performers from across London for a one-off spontaneous, dynamic mass movement of bodies and lives. Each person brings themselves and together we shift, make room, lead, follow or adapt. Expect a view of the world in its multiplicity, its opposites and all its beautiful complexity.
Supported by Live Art UK: Diverse Actions, Surf The Wave and King Asia Foods
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