Until Saturday, January 5
The Victoria Park Tennis Stadium in Causeway Bay plays host once a year to Hong Kong’s biggest tennis tournament. In 2008, household names like Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams will be among the field of nine of the world’s top women’s tennis players who will compete against one another in singles or doubles play or – in the case of seven out of the nine ladies – both at the JB Group Classic 2008 hard court event. Play on January 3 will take place from 6-11pm approximately, play on Day 3 of the tournament will go from 4:30-11pm approximately while the Singles and Doubles Finals on January 5 is scheduled for 2:30-8:30pm approximately. Tickets prices vary day by day, starting at $380 and $280 for Day 1 and going up to $680 and $580 for Day 4, and four-day packages are $1600 and $1300 from URBTIX, 2734 9009. For further details, go to www.jbgroupclassic.com

January 5 and 13
The Chinese name of the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC)’s Wu Dao Qing Nian project literally translates into English as ‘dancing youth’. And dancing youth are indeed the performers in focus at the Wu Dao Qing Nian - Podium Dance Performance(s): one pair of which will be presented on Saturday, January 5, at the Stanley Plaza Village Square; and another two of which will be performed on Sunday, 13 January, at the HK Cultural Centre Piazza. Each comprises four dance pieces that have been evocatively entitled Face To Face, Farewell, Finding Love, and Game. The shows will commence at 2:30pm and 4:30pm on each of the two days. For further information about these free programmes, go to www.ccdc.com.hk or phone the CCDC Dance Centre, 2328 9205.

Tuesday, January 8
The first individual to become a HKSAR resident under Hong Kong’s ‘Quality Migrant Admission Scheme’ headlines the Panasonic Lang Lang Concert 2008 at the HK Coliseum on Tuesday, January 8. Internationally acclaimed pianist Lang Lang will play Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the ‘for one night only’ classical music presentation. His performance will begin at 8pm. Tickets are priced at $480 to $180 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

January 8-20
Since its original publication in 1943, French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince novella has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 160 languages. Adapted for film, television, opera and theatre, the story of a young extra-terrestrial royal from a distant asteroid and the characters he meets on his adventures will be presented as a spectacular stage musical from January 8 to 20 at the HK Cultural Centre’s Grand Theatre. Performances will take place every evening except Monday at 7:30pm while the Saturday and Sunday matinees begin at 2:30pm. Tickets are $750 to $300 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

January 10-13
Stand-up comedian Justin Hamilton’s Three Colours: Hammo has won him considerable acclaim along with laughs in his native Australia. A trilogy of separate but connected tales that can be viewed on their own as well as a single big story, the way that they will be presented at the Fringe Club’s Fringe Gallery this month provides interested parties with the option of viewing the first episode (Moving) on its own on Thursday, January 10, the second story (Calliope) on Friday, January 11, the third and final tale (The Letter) on Saturday, January 12, and/or Hamilton’s entire innovative narrative in its three-in-one entirety on Sunday, January 13. The January 10 to 12 performances commence at 8pm while the bumper January 13 show starts at 3:30pm. Tickets for the January 10 to 12 shows are $180 while those for the January 13 show cost $360 from HK Ticketing,
31 288 288.

January 11 and 12
The late, great Isaac Stern described the then 10-year-old Shanghai Conservatory student shown playing the cello in the last 15 minutes of the Oscar-winning From Mao to Mozart that documented the American virtuoso musician’s 1979 visit to China as “one of the finest young instrumentalists of our time”. Close to three decades on, that Chinese cellist, Wang Jian, will perform in concert with maestro Edo de Waart and the HK Philharmonic Orchestra on January 11 and 12 at the HK Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall. Billed as De Waart Meets Wang Jian, the performances begin at 8pm on both evenings. Tickets are $380 to $120 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

January 11-13
What is the Spirit of Guangxi? As conceived and presented by the Dian Dian Corridor (Mainland China’s third contemporary dance centre after Beijing and Guangzhou) and the Qing Du Dance Cooperative (a grassroots organization from the country’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), it’s an intriguing mixture of modern dance and experimental theatre performed by professionals from the fields of dance and theatre but also media and a 70-year-old Taoist master of funeral rites. And although the production contains some dialogue in both the Zhuang dialect as well as Putonghua (Mandarin), a spokeswoman for the City Festival 2008, under whose aegis it has been brought to Hong Kong, has given assurances that unfamiliarity with these tongues will not be a barrier in understanding the overall content and context of this show. Spirit will run from January 11 to 13 at the Fringe Club’s Fringe Studio. Showtime is at 9pm on January 11 and 12 but 3pm on January 13. Tickets are $150 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
Sunday, January 13
Hauntingly primal tunes and powerful pounding rhythms helped make Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (1937) the most commercially successful classical composition of the 20th century. And to celebrate its fifth anniversary, the now 70-member HK Youth Wind Philharmonia will give a world premiere to a new arrangement of this popular cantata about wine, women and love, sung in its original languages, at the HK City Hall’s Concert Hall on Sunday, January 13. Staged as a full production (and as part of a larger concert programme that also includes works by classical music giants Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), this performance will feature special guests like soprano Jovita Leung, tenor David Quah, baritone Sylvester Che and the Diocesan Boys’ School Treble Choir. Showtime is 3pm. Tickets are $140 to $80 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

Gustav Holst and Johann Strauss Jr have their place in the HK Sinfonietta’s Sounds Great IV in Space concert programme but there’s no denying that John Williams (Star Wars; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial; Superman), is the top man as far as musical compositions for space-themed movies are concerned. Thus it is that he is credited with five out of the eleven pieces that will be performed on Sunday, January 13, at the HK Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall. This ‘Relax’-themed HK Sinfonietta concert will have Anthony Inglis as its conductor and presenter. The performance will commence at 3pm (yes, at the exact same time as the HK Youth Wind Philharmonia’s over on the other side of Victoria Harbour!). Tickets are $180 to $80 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

January 13 and 14
The Lan Cao Bluegrass Band may be popular performers along Shanghai’s pub, folk festival and acoustic venue circuit but as the title of its Rising from the Grassland show emphasizes, its band members trace their origins far from China’s largest city. More specifically, four of the quintet hail from Hohot, the traditional capital of Chinese Mongolia, while the fifth is actually American; and given their cultural along with geographic background, it should come as no surprise that their musical repertoire comprises traditional and contemporary Mongolian and Chinese songs together with tunes rendered in the bluegrass country music style. Their January 13 and 14 performances at the Fringe Club’s Fringe
Theatre will get going at 7:30pm. Tickets are $180 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.