A quick guide to Hong Kong's Fringe Club City Festival 2010

Consider it good timing -– the City Festival 2010 will be all about Guangzhou this year, which is apt considering how the HK$67 billion Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong express rail project has thrust the city to the front of people's minds recently. 

With Guangzhou given center stage (the festival is based on a single locale every year) the art extravaganza dabbles in theatre, dance, music and visual art, with showings mostly held at anchor site the Hong Kong Fringe Club from January 14 to February 12.

The festival aims to dispel misconceptions about regional cultures, says Fringe Club director Benny Chia. "For example, 'Lingnan culture' is a term often used as a more formal alternative to 'Cantonese culture,' which some critics consider intellectually lightweight and frivolous. We offer evidence that Cantonese culture is valid and worth exploring."

Here's a look at our festival favorites.

Headlining the City Festival is Walking to Canton X Canton Canton, two exhibitions held jointly in Hong Kong’s Fringe Club and Guangzhou’s Fei Gallery.

To evoke the bygone tradition of Hong Kongers hauling material assistance to their poorer relatives in Guangzhou, Hong Kong’s Walking to Canton exhibition showcases 15 emerging local artists’ innovative ‘gifts’ to the mainland.

To return the favor, 15 Guangzhou artists will show audiences snippets of life across the border in an installation at Fei Gallery for Canton Canton.

January 14 – February 12
Hong Kong: Fringe Club, 2 Lower Albert Rd.,Central and Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, 30 Pak Tin St., Shek Kip Mei
Guangzhou: Fei Gallery: 5 Yi Da Building, Nong Lin Xia Rd., Guangzhou.

Guangzhou's music talents takes the center stage at Guangzhou Live, a series of concerts that runs throughout the festival. Acts include established rockers Mouliukei; Wu Tiao Ren, a band that sings in Haifeng dialect; genre-busting duo Liang Yi-yuan and Li Dai-guo; and newcomers Bubble Noble.

Mouliukei X Ricemagnet: January 16, Liang Yiyuan + Li Daiguo: January 23, Wu Tiao Ren: February 5, Bubble Noble: February 6 – February 10, 8pm, Fringe Studio, HK$120 – HK$150

Swing dancers from around the world shimmy along to jazzy classics performed by local big bands the Saturday Night Jazz Orchestra, the Basic Notes Jazz Big Band, the Stray Katz Big Band and Lando Bernal’s Big Broad Band.

January 15 – January 16, City Hall Theatre, HK$150- HK$250

Acclaimed Hong Kong theatre company Theatre du Pif performs Marcovaldo, a play based on a short stories by Italo Calvino that charts the exploits of a dreamy worker living in a drab industrial city with his family.

January 22, 23, 26-30. Fringe Theatre, HK$110-HK$160

Penned by Jason Robert Brown, the Tony Award-winning songwriter hailed by he Philadelphia Inquirer as ‘Broadway’s smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim,” Songs for a New World is an ‘abstract’ musical where a potpourri of musical styles are connected not by a storyline but by theme. The show stars Hong Kong musical theatre performers.

February 3 - February 6, Fringe Studio, HK$200-HK$250

With interactive mime performance Why Not 1.0, Korean theater director Yoon Jong-yeoun tries to convince his audience that they're actually at a pub floating on water by way of imagination.

January 20 - January 21, Fringe Gallery, HK$80-HK$100

Singaporean theater performer Gani Abdul Karim performs in a powerful semi-autobiographical drama that raises existential questions about the status quo of mixed raced communities. The word "Salusuah" means "feeling one's body" in Indonesian.

January 21 - January 23, Fringe Studio, HK$120-HK$150