February 1 and 2
The HK Philharmonic Orchestra’s Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto oncerts
will be among those rare occasions when the humble but popular guitar teams up with a full symphony orchestra. Chinese virtuoso Yang Xuefei is the featured soloist for the showcase piece of the programme, Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. The gardens of the King of Spain’s Palacio del Aranjuez inspired the work, which Rodrigo described as alluding to “the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds and the gushing of fountains”. It was written in 1939, the year the Second World War erupted in Europe and the Spanish Civil War ended. The HKPO’s programme also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No 4 and Respighi’s Suite for Organ and Strings with Vincent Dubois as the organ soloist and Edo de Waart conducting. Showtime is 8pm on February 1 and 2 at the HK Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall.
Tickets are $250 to $100 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

February 7-21
February 7 is the first day of year 4705 according to the Chinese
calendar that incorporates lunar as well as solar elements. It also
will be the first day of a new Chinese year of the rat and the
celebrations that, as befits New Year being the most important festival in the calendar, traditionally go on for 15 days. For traditionally minded Chinese, each of those 15 days is devoted to particular activities. For instance, the first is earmarked for welcoming the deities of heaven and earth, the second is, among other things, a day to be kind to canines as it is the birthday of all dogs, and the 15th is celebrated as the day of the Spring Lantern Festival, also sometimes known as Chinese Valentine’s Day. At the same time, pretty much any day during this period will see its share of feasting and fun, as superstition has it that what happens during the first days of the new year reflects the following 12 months!

Thursday, February 7
‘The invention of tradition’ may sound like an oxymoron but it’s actually a phrase coined by professors Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger to describe how some cultural practices we think of as traditional are in fact recent developments. Such is the case with one mega event that will take place on Thursday, February 7. First organized by the HK Tourism Board (HKTB) in 2004, the Cathay Pacific International Chinese New Year Night Parade will include colourful floats and presentations from over 20 performing arts groups. This year’s procession is set to begin at 8pm at the HK Cultural Centre and will proceed along Salisbury Road and
Mody Lane before ending at the New World Centre at 9:30pm. Viewing along the parade route is free but tickets costing $300, $240 and $180 can be purchased at HKTB Visitor Information & Services Centres for stand seats. For further details, call the HKTB Visitor Hotline, 2508 1234 or go to www.discoverhongkong.com/

February 7 and 10
Association football (or soccer, as it is sometimes known) has been
described as the workingman’s ballet or the beautiful game. To see
whether it deserves such accolades, head to HK Stadium on the 1st and 4th days of Chinese New Year to watch three top international teams (Penarol Football Club, three times South American club champions and 36 times winners of the Uruguay League; Hajduk Split, 16 times Croatian league champions; and Ulsan Hyundai, triple Korean League champions) and a HK League Selection team in action in the Wing Lung Bank 2008 Lunar New Year Cup. The first two matches of the knockout competition will be played on Thursday, February 7, while the finals will take place on Sunday, February 10. Tickets priced from $380 to $150 and are on sale at HK Stadium, 2895 7895, and the HK Football
Association’s head office in Homantin, 2712 9122. For more details, go to www.hkfa.com

Friday, February 8
The Chinese have been staging fireworks displays for thousands of years. But the ancients could surely never have imagined amazing computer-controlled pyrotechnical spectacles like the 2008 Lunar New Year Fireworks Display to be staged over Victoria Harbour, between Central and Tsim Sha Tsui, on the evening of what is officially the second day of the new Chinese year of the rat. The sky is to be set on fire from 8pm. There is no charge for viewing; just make sure that you find a good place to take in what promises
to be a magnificent show!

February 8-18
The tail end of 2007 proved quite eventful for Cantopop star Hacken Lee. Not only did he celebrate his 40th birthday in December but he also became a father for the first time two months earlier while November saw the release of the Hacken Lee No. 1 Hits quadruple CD album. Never one to rest on his laurels, though, his next big project turns the HK Coliseum into Hacken’s Concert Hall from February 8 to 18. The slow ballad specialist’s show on Friday, February 8, is scheduled for 9:30pm but performances on the evenings thereafter commence earlier, at 8:15pm. Tickets are $480 to $100 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

February 9-16
All the movies that the HK Film Archive will screen on February 9, 10 and 16 as part of the Fun, Fun, Fun: Celebrating Chinese New Year programme will be shown in Cantonese without English subtitles, and in DigiBeta rather than print format. But the sheer entertainment and cinematic nostalgia of these six festive films from the 1950s and ’60s demands they are included in this column. Stellar names to look out for include the legendary Yam Kim-fai in The Prince Incognito (a 1961 Cantonese adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s satirical The Inspector General), comic performers Sun Ma Si-Tsang and Tang Bik-Wan in Mr Wong’s Adventures with the Unruly Girl (1959), and the quartet of Josephine Siao Fong Fong, Lui Kay, Nancy Sit and Lydia Shum in the song-and-
dance-filled Moon and Flower (AKA Moments of Glorious Beauty) (1969).
|Tickets for the screenings are $30 each from URBTIX, 2734 9009.
For further details (including individual screening dates and times), go to  www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/CulturalService/filmprog/english/
2008cny/2008cny_index.html

February 9-March 23
For Bartabas, the director/choreographer of the Zingaro equestrian
theatre group, “When we finish a performance, it’s finished forever, it’s so difficult.” In fact, as each spectacle is created with a special group of horses, and horses have shorter lives than humans, it is impossible to stage the same show many years later. Therefore February 9 to March 23 may well be the only chance Hong Kongers will have to check out Battuta, Zingaro’s stunning salute to the ancient, nomadic gypsy culture.
The extravaganza will take place every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 8pm and every Saturday, Sunday and public holiday at 6pm at the Hung Hom Ferry Pier Lawn. Tickets ranging from $600 to $200 are available from URBTIX, 2734 9009.

February 11-17
Feeling chilled by the winter winds? Then maybe it’s time to warm up with dance performances and workshops, live music and parties in a festival that has grown from a single-day event six years ago to a seven-day extravaganza this year. The HK Salsa Festival commences on February 11 with a free grand party in Lan Kwai Fong and will close on February 17 with an evening of international salsa performances and a farewell World Salsa Dance Party at Room 401 of the HK Convention & Exhibition Centre. Tickets and further details for the festival can be obtained from www.hksalsafestival.com

February 13-16
Although it may sound ancient as well as august, the National Theatre of Great Britain has actually been in existence for less than five decades. So it seems appropriate that two new plays – Enda Walsh’s cyberspace- themed Chatroom and Mark Ravenhill’s comedic Citizenship, which captures the confusion of burgeoning sexuality – figure in the celebrated company’s HK Arts Festival 2008 double-bill. Performances of these Asian-premiering works are scheduled for 8pm from February 13-16, with an additional afternoon show on Saturday, February 16, at 3pm, all in the HK Academy for the Performing Arts’ Lyrics Theatre. Tickets are $480 to $180 and available URBTIX, 2734 9009 and HK Ticketing,
31 288 288.