Laila – (Rescheduled)

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) is pleased to announce the special project Laila, an immersive and interactive opera experience, as one of the major highlights of the 50th HKAF in 2022. A co-production of the HKAF and the Finnish National Opera and Ballet (FNOB), Laila will receive its international premiere in Hong Kong, the first time it will be performed outside Finland.

Scheduled to take place at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum from 25 February 2022, the experience will be free of charge to the public upon registration, with further details to be announced at a later date.

Together with a series of outreach and education events, the special project Laila is solely sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

Laila continues the Festival’s commitment to presenting innovative productions from around the world; this production, made possible by a meeting of performing arts with cutting-edge technology, conjures up untold possibilities, and will be sure to delight Hong Kong audiences, particularly younger ones.

The special project Laila, along with complementary outreach and education activities fronted by the HKAF’s Laila Outreach Ambassador Mr Zeno Koo––including the “Arts Tech Creative Competition”, a teacher seminar, school tours, workshops, introductory talks and guided tours––will further advance Arts Tech initiatives in Hong Kong, as part of the 50th HKAF in 2022.

Created for the FNOB by world-renowned composer and conductor Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen, dramaturg Ms Paula Vesala, sound designer Mr Tuomas Norvio and arts and technology specialists the Ekho Collective, Laila incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI), V irtual Reality (VR), video-projection mapping, 360 spatial sound and real time sensors to offer a unique, immersive and interactive arts experience in the dome-shaped performance space.

Laila was born out of Opera Beyond, the FNOB’s international open call which started in 2019 for concepts of an immersive, interactive art piece. The work was selected as the winning proposal out of 195 applications, and its creative team have brought the concept to fruition in collaboration with the FNOB.

Making a breakthrough by pushing beyond the traditional conventions of opera, Laila invites visitors into an exploration with AI––a self-learning code that mirrors its creator’s failures and successes––to become co-creators in shaping a new reality, and to confront our hopes, fears and anxieties related to technology and the unknown. The experience is accessible to arts lovers, users of new technologies, young people and families alike.