September 5-23
Macau’s visual artist Leo Yen Wai Ip spent 2007 travelling to the world’s most renowned artistic havens and studying under New York post-modern concept artist Milan Knizak at Salzburg’s Summer Academy. He returned to Macau with a brand new portfolio, titled Work to Myself – Chapter 3, which will be on show at Creative Macau’s gallery space in mid-September. The exhibition opens with a ceremony at 6pm on September 5, and discuss the art with Leo himself at a September 13 meet-the-artist event at 4:30pm. Admission is free, and opening hours are 2-7pm, Monday-Saturday.
Until September 7
Leather collages and Changxing purple clay teapots are the traditional Chinese crafts slated for display at the Lou Kau Mansion in early September. As part of the multi-instalment Zhejiang Folk Arts show, the work of Xu Rong – winner of the Hangzhou International Folk Handicrafts Expo in 2003 – includes collages of brightly coloured and variously textured pieces of leather to create figures, objects and stories. The teapot exhibition features the craftsmanship of Jiang Yan, whose Imperial Seal Pot won silver at the First International Expo of Folk Handicrafts in Hangzhou. Admission to the show is free during the mansion’s opening hours of Tuesday-Sunday 9am-7pm; weekends 10am-7pm. Workshops will also be held for MOP$20 on Saturdays from 3-5pm and on Sundays from 10am-12pm and 3-5pm. Visit www.icm.gov.mo for details.
September 10-20
For a stark contrast to such big-bang CGI productions as Dark Knight and the Olympic Opening Ceremony (!), it is difficult to think of anything better than The Black Box Theatre Series. As the name suggests, Black Box productions are staged in a spartan blackened space to create a sense of intimacy between the artists and the audience. For the group’s performances in the Macao Cultural Centre’s small auditorium seating will even be moved onto the stage to increase the immediacy. The series comprises six pieces, each by an experimental company from Macau, Singapore or South Korea. Shows include Out To Production Group’s The Secret Woods, Theatre Momggol’s Handcart Overturned, Theatre Practice’s Catman, Step Out’s Where Did You Go? Our Childhood, Hui Kok Theatre’s Blue Drawer and Blue Blue Sky’s Bouffon. With two performances a day on September 10-12, 15-16 and 19-20, tickets are sold at a double-feature rate of MOP$100. Phone Macau Ticket at 2380 5083 to book. For a detailed schedule and synopses, visit www.ccm.gov.mo.
September 13-October 1
September in Macau will certainly go out with a bang, not a whimper courtesy of the 20th Macau International Fireworks Display Contest. The contest features teams of firework artists from 10 countries – Germany, Korea, Japan (2005 first-place winner), the UK, Portugal, Taiwan, the Philippines, France (2006 first-place winner), Australia and China. Visitors are encouraged to watch from the seafront of the Macau Tower, from where teams will project music to accompany their displays. If you’re planning to watch from another location, tune into Radio Macau FM 100.7 for the music. Judging criteria include originality of the design, the sky area covered by the outburst, the harmony between the fireworks and the music, and the regularity of the launchings. There are two shows each evening at 9pm and 10pm, on September 13 and 14, 20, 27 and October 1.
September 14
HUSH!! Full Band 2008 returns with a very impressive line-up, so prepare to rock your guts out as celebration to the Mid-Autumn Festival. Bands playing include Beijing’s funkiest New Pants, Taiwan’s Won Fu, Seoul’s Crying Nut and Pop Shuvit from Kuala Lumpur. Our local representatives are the mighty Paul Wong, JuicyNing and Wild Child. And don’t forget to discover talents from Macau’s own indie scene, as 12 Macao’s bands will be playing for the rock marathon too. The free festival will kick off at 1pm at Macao Culture Centre CCM Art Plaza and for full bands listing, check out www.ccm.gov.mo/hush.

Seasons’ Greetings
The Venetian’s first anniversary on August 28 also marked the soft opening of The Four Seasons Hotel Macao, a fellow Las Vegas Sands Corporation venture, and the official opening of the Shoppes at Four Seasons. With its 360 rooms and suites and neo-classical Portuguese-Oriental interior, the new hotel plays the boutique counterpart to the baroque Italian grandiosity of the Venetian’s 3,000 rooms and suites. Dinning options include Cantonese cuisine, tea and dim sum restaurant Zi Yat Heen, Portuguese buffet Belcanção, and poolside sandwich shop Splash, as well as the Windows and Bar Azul lounges. Zi Yat Heen and Bar Azul are now open, and the launch dates for the other venues have yet to be announced. The hotel’s Plaza Casino consists of 175 gaming tables and 213 slot machines. Phone + (853) 2881-8888 for enquiries and reservations.

The Shoppes at Four Seasons connect to the Venetian’s own Grand Canal Shoppes, and together the shopping annex provides an indoor footpath between hotels. Cotai’s newest luxury mall offers three floors of high-end boutiques which coalesce around the Moët Bar – a black and gold toned champagne, sushi and caviar lounge. Guests can sit at the bar, in the lounge sofas ensconced within towering gold champagne-bubble walls, or at tables beneath the hundred or so floating yellow bulbs that comprise a carbonated chandelier. Nestled under the mall escalators, the bar is the epicentre of mall traffic from without and an isolated forest of branching Moët & Chandon champagne flute stands from within.

The 28 August celebrations included the official opening of the Venetian’s (and Asia’s) first resident show, Cirque du Soleil’s Zaia. Showtimes are currently irregular, so visit www.cotaiticketing.com for bookings. Tickets cost MOP$788, MOP$588 and MOP$388.
(See www.bcmagazine.net for our review of the show).

No Longer Amiss
When the Miss Macau Pageant withered in 1997, it left the winner of that year, Agnes Lo, with the perhaps unenviable prospect of reigning as Miss Macau for the rest of her life. Much to her relief, however, Sun Innovation Entertainment Company has decided to resurrect the pageant this year. “I can finally go off my diet!” was Miss Lo’s immediate response, one witness reported.

That witness was Andrea Notestine, senior vice president of Sun Innovation and self-dubbed ‘middle person’ for organizing all aspects of Miss Macau 2008. “Macau was a different place 11 years ago. Getting enough contestants interested was a little difficult at that time, the population of Macau only 500,000,” she says.

Since the pageant’s 1972 conception, it has passed through the hands of a slew of sponsors, from the Macau Tourism Office to Pansy Ho, the most recent. When asked why Sun Innovation is risking reviving an event for which interest
fizzled out years ago, Notestine cited Macau’s growth as an entertainment destination. The company is currently planning on hosting the pageant indefinitely into the future, so we’ll see whether her optimism is justified come the within the next few years.

This year’s pageant, to be held at the Venetian, will showcase 10 finalists, evaluated on a question-and-answer session and a talent show, as well as on their composure and appearance in swimwear, evening wear, casual wear and qipao modelling. The contestants, necessarily permanent residents of Macau, range from 19 to 26 years old and are either students or fresh graduates, with two holding master’s degrees.

The winner will go on to represent Macau in the Miss International Pageant (slated for November at the Venetian), another Sun Innovation project. Other perks for the winner include MOP$50,000, jewellery and clothing, beauty treatments and a talent contract with TVB. A fixed donation of MOP$1 million from the proceeds will go towards Sichuan earthquake relief.

In true pageant form, we’ve asked each of the ten contestants, pictured on the right, a question: If you could change one thing about the world, what would you change?

Miss Macau 2008 will be hosted at the CotaiArena on September 7 at 7:15pm. Tickets cost MOP$100; visit www.cotaiticketing.com to book.