Life of Guangzhou - The 5th Guangdong Modern Dance Festival

Entering its fifth year, the annual Guangdong Modern Dance Festival (GMDF) will take place for the first time in July at Guangzhou. This decision was made last year when the May Day national holiday was reduced from 7 days to 3 days. "Without the week-long holiday in May, participants in other parts of China will not be able to travel to Guangzhou . We have deliberately scheduled this dance event at the beginning of the summer holiday – a time when people in China usually travel," said Kwong Wailap, the Programme Director of GMDF. "The challenge ahead is to re-position this event to be a "local" international event. With the dates reshuffle, the level of participation from Guangzhou public will be crucial for the future success of this cultural brand of Guangzhou ."

Over the years, this internationally revered festival has featured the forefront international modern dance innovators, and has grown into a hub of Chinese modern dance development where new ideas are turned into reality. The Festival is unique in its achievement in enhancing exchanges and understanding ; as well as the pursuance of excellence in modern dance creation. It consists of four major parts :

• The Masterclass Sweatshop – in which renowned choreographers and dancers give master classes to Festival participants over five consecutive mornings ;

• The Chatter Box – an early afternoon discussion session devoted to the exchange of ideas among Festival participants ;

• The Youth Dance Marathon (YDM) - an open platform for young artists to present new works over 5 consecutive afternoons – a format borrowed from fringe festivals in other countries. This year's Festival will launch The Springboard, a platform for emerging and established artists to present experimental and visionary artistic works .

• The Main Stage - performances of professional companies.

The coming festival will open with an extraordinary environmental performance directed by Guangdong Modern Dance Company's Artistic Director Mr Pun Siu-fai. Apart from the exquisite dancers from Guangdong Modern Dance Company, Hong Kong's award-winning youth dance ambassador Wudaoqingnian will also be featured. Admission is by invitation only. So please call early to reserve your place.

World renowned Japanese experimental performance group Pappa Tarahumara will make their China debut in Guangzhou with a physical interpretation of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters . Director Hiroshi Koike gives this tragic comedy a kitchen-sink treatment, interweaving familiar attributes of Japanese pop-culture such as anime, karaoke and AV soft-porn. The result is surprisingly intimate and intriguing.

City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) returns to Guangzhou with founder-choreographer Helen Lai's latest work, HerStory – inspired by the embroidered language developed over generations exclusively among women in the Jianghong county at Hunan province. HerStory may prove to be Lai's magnum opus on the subject of women.

Australian premier modern dance company, the Expressions Dance Company, returns to the Festival with two electrifying dance pieces: Fragments of Memory by Cloudgate Dance Theatre choreographer Cheng Tsung-lung and On Thin Ice by the company's Artistic Director Maggi Sietsma . The company is as dynamic and compelling as ever since their last visit to Guangzhou in 2006.

The Absolute Solo will feature Japanese female artist Mao Arata; Korean artist Kim Yong-chul (named Rising Star by the Seoul Ministry of Culture) and Italian avant garde Alessandro Carboni .

The Beijing Dance / LDTX will perform Sang Jijia's Unspeakable – a work that that inspired Sang's very poetic solo Enigma in last year's festival. The work is set to a world divested of illusions and lights and deprived of the memory of home. An exile of absurdity.

German artist Antje Pfundter investigates the possibilities of the art of storytelling through a mixture of dance and spoken word s in her solo eigenSinn . Performed with a mirror ball on her head, the work transforms t he entire stage into a wild star shower, with the centre point being none other than the dancer herself. This German Tanztheater production has been a hit in dance festivals in Europe and America since its premiere in 2004 .

From Lyon in France, La Compagne ACTE combines dance and science in Danse Experimenta . Narrated by French renowned scientist Mr. Daniel GUINET, the pure logical order of atoms is given an emotional interpretation by choreographer Annick Charlot. Th e production has enjoyed almost 100 sold-out performances since its premiere in 2002.

The 5th Guangdong Modern Dance Festival will take place on July 20 -26, 2008 in Guangzhou . For programme enquiry and reservation, please call 020-87049512 .

The 5th Guangdong Modern Dance Festival is presented by the Xinghai Performing Arts Development Group; Guangdong Modern Dance Company and Guangdong Xinghai Performing Arts Development Company Ltd.; and co-organized by LDTX (Beijing), CCDC (Hong Kong), Guangdong Dance School and Guangdong Song and Dance Theatre.