It’s no secret that opera around the world is a dying art. Attendances are down, younger audiences have no shortage of entertainment online, and the virtuosic masters of the art form are retiring one by one.
While Chinese opera still has a loyal audience back at home, it faces the same struggles that plague its western counterpart. Practitioners anticipate immense challenges in growing any appreciation for the artform, especially as understanding the complex dances and songs of Chinese opera is highly dependent on the audiences’ knowledge of Chinese folklore and culture.
Plays revolve around pieces of Chinese classical literature such as Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the most important novels in China’s history, and can be confusing even for fluent speakers.
However none of this seems in particular to affect Mitche Choi, one of the youngest artists at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Our team met up with her recently to document her love for the craft and to discover why she traded a life in London for the arduous path of a professional performer in Hong Kong.
