Krossing Over Arts Festival (KOAF) in its second edition, with an exciting week-long program, features a series of interdisciplinary and collaborative performances along with a plethora of artist talks, dance workshops, and international film screenings from April 16 to 22, 2018 at nine different locations around HCMC.

Artists are practicing for their performances at KOAF 2018 

Taking the theme “Home, City and Architecture,” site-specific works presented at this year’s festival look into the intimate relationship between people and their ever-evolving surroundings.

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s classic novel “Invisible Cities,” KOAF’s artists view themselves as travelers sharing stories of the cities they know or have been to from their own perspectives using different methods of expression. Together these performances unveil different facades of HCMC, which invoke a conversation between these travelers and their audience about the degree of disconnection from the very space they occupy.

Apart from these performances, KOAF 2018 includes in its schedule seven titles of experimental dance films by independent filmmakers, producers, and choreographers that reflect the festival’s overarching theme. Some of these pieces have previously been shown at international film festivals in Budapest, Mexico, and Paris.

KOAF aims to create a brand new art-viewing experience through the choice of atypical venues such as a coffee shop, a concept store, a historical educational building, and an experimental art space, which liberates art from intimidating white walls. This not only makes art more approachable to a larger crowd of participants, but also ignites their sense of discovery, urging them to travel to see the art, meet new people and visit new places.

Each of KOAF’s eight collaborative performances will be presented twice at different places. Therefore, the experiences will vary every time.

Krossing Over Arts Festival first started in 2017 by choreographer Sébastien Ly with support from the French Institute in Vietnam and Kerman, featuring interdisciplinary performances at various locations in HCMC. The festival is all about crossings: between contemporary dance and other art forms, between local and international artistic approaches, and between the public and artists.

Kerman brings to life the projects of the choreographer Sébastien Ly: on-stage performances, site-specific experiences, and short films. Each project has at its heart a dialogue between dance and various arts such as literature, visual arts, photography, video, and music.

SGT