Chinese Arts Space To Relaunch As Chinese Arts Now With New Festival For 2019

Today at a launch event at the Matcham Theatre, The Hippodrome it will be announced that London is to host the first arts festival in the UK dedicated to British-Chinese performance, visual arts and culture. The festival, which runs from 23 January to 3 February 2019, is the first major project of Chinese Arts Now, the new arts council funded body to celebrate and promote Chinese artists, both British born and from the Chinese diaspora.

Chinese Arts Now (CAN) which takes over the responsibilities of Chinese Arts Space (CAS), an organisation created in 2005 to develop and commission contemporary Chinese performing and visual arts, will run a series of events in 2018 in the run-up to the new festival. The new organisation also aims to be a platform for British Chinese artists, working to raise the representation of Chinese performers in the UK.

The organisation's new artistic director concert pianist and theatre maker, An-Ting Chang says 'I am very excited to lead the launch of CAN. I believe that the arts are a powerful tool for sharing different perspectives and the contemporary voice of Chinese people is not always expressed or heard. We hope CAN will inspire a new generation of Chinese artists as well as intrigue audiences to find out more about the contemporary Chinese world.

My team and I are thrilled to have this opportunity to curate a festival featuring a diverse range of artforms. We want to showcase innovative high quality contemporary works created by both British Chinese and Chinese artists from different parts of the world.'

CAN will be running four events in 2018, including a concert blending eastern and western instruments, a British Chinese comedy night featuring Phil Wang, Ken Cheng, Nigel Ng and Evelyn Mok, and two 'Shanghai Nights' featuring jazz music performed, cocktails and old Chinese movies.

Chinese Arts Now 2019, the inaugural festival will open with the unveiling of a specially commissioned sculpture by Hong Kong based artist Otto Li. The festival will include theatre, dance, music, film, workshops and a symposium and take place at various venues across London. The full festival programme will be announced later this year.

Website: chineseartsnow.org.uk

Twitter: twitter.com/chineseartsnow

Facebook: facebook.com/chineseartsnow/­

Artistic Director An-Ting Chang regularly appears on the national and international concert circuit and has been featured on many radio programmes, including BBC Radio 3's 'In Tune'. In 2012 Chang created Concert Theatre, an emerging company pioneering a new hybrid genre interweaving classical music and drama . She has been awarded grants from the Arts Council England, Help Musicians UK, Fenton Arts Trust, Royal Victoria Hall Foundation, Garrick Club Trust and Elias Fawcett Trust.

Her directing credits for Concert Theatre include Lao Can Impression (National Theater Taiwan), The Tenant (UK tour including National Portrait Gallery, Holburne Museum Bath) and Kiss of the Earth (UK Tour); music directing credits include Wattle and Daub's The Depraved Appetite of Tarrarre the Freak (Wilton's Music Hall, Tobacco Factory Theatre).

British Chinese includes any person now living in the UK who is of Chinese descent, irrespective of their or their family's country of birth. CAN's use of 'BC' covers a wide, dynamic group of artists who identify with both the UK and their Chinese origins.

CAS (Chinese Arts Space) was established in 2005 as a non-profit making arts organisation to develop and commission contemporary Chinese performing and visual artists, and redress the significant gap in provision for this sector in the UK. CAS encourages innovation in both traditional and contemporary arts, through collaborations and cross-artforms. CAS has staged 'The Circle' and 'Five Circles' arts festivals at the Linbury Theatre (Royal Opera House) and Lilian Baylis Theatre (Sadlers Wells), brokering new international partnerships between artists from the UK and East Asia. Performances have been presented at the Thames Festival and New Music 20x12 (Southbank Centre), West End Live (Leicester Square), City Showcase (Chinatown), Hong Kong Arts Festival (City Hall) and UK Now festival (Beijing).

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