Performance Review

Cankramati, The Turns, East Kowloon Cultural Centre

Author/ Being Neighbourly
14 December 2025

Tsang Man-Tung is a busy man. Not only is he the responsible person for the concept, but the Director and Art Director of Cankramati (Into the Macrocosm), a Theatrical Meditation production.

For those who don’t know, Cankramati comes from Pali/Sanskrit, and means to walk up and down, pace, or wander, especially in a meditative or purposeful way. It’s common in Buddhist contexts for monks or spiritual practice, more commonly known as ‘Walking meditation,’ contrasting with simple walking by implying repetition or a specific meditative gait.

The 80-minute production presented by non-profit arts group SAMANA, opened with a lone actor (Leung Tin-chak) on the stage in meditation and unfurled, combining singing bowl, Bach, cosmoscape, and mindfulness. He was joined by Tsang, Alex Cheung, Natalie Mak and Sin Ko-man, whose dancing was ever more impressive for their atypical dance wear — particularly Mak’s heavy-looking civilian trench coat, which, nonetheless, seemed to do nothing to restrict her strength and dexterity.

The ‘Illuminating journey to the sea of tranquility’ as it is billed in the programme was a very good excuse to visit the newly opened (in November) East Kowloon Cultural Centre (EKCC) in Kwun Tong — and during its inaugural season, no less.

EKCC features a 1,200-seat hall, a 500-seat theatre, two smaller theatres and a so-called Test-bed theatre, equipped with advanced stage equipment, including a multi-directional sound system. It’s heartening to see this development to complement West Kowloon’s offerings, as well as those on the tip of the peninsula and on Hong Kong Island. The arts’ flag has been pummelled a little deeper into terra firma and that’s never a bad thing as they offer so much necessary pause and reflection, for better living. The tightly-packed theatre of Cankramati certainly suggests that Hong Kong audiences have an appetite for the growing portions of ‘food’ being dished out, choosing to be there instead of giving in to the pull of the city’s million other offerings.

With dancing balanced and enhanced by live music: Tsang on the Singing bowl, Angus Lee on the flute and Janice Zhou on the cello, one can’t help imagining how much fun rehearsals must have been in bringing this motley crew collaboration to its finish.

The production certainly was the odyssey that the programme promised with the gently sloping stage kicking off as a pared-down tableau, before transforming into a canvas onto which visual projections swirled, conjuring the cosmos and life’s journey through an often bumpy ride.

Art is certainly subjective and for me, the production journeyed me back to student life in 1990s London, a time when cultural offerings were not just on tap, but gushing, from the high-brow museum to the nightlife, where clubs also offered projected backdrops, music and reverie as mesmerising as that of Cankramati in chill-out rooms, after one was spent from dancing.

Given its superior stage and sound systems, we can expect more multi-dimensional takes from this venue. Stay tuned.

Cankramati was on at The Turns, East Kowloon Cultural Centre (www.ekcc.hk). The production was presented by SAMANA, a non-profit organisation registered under the name of Tsang Man-tung in 2021, with a view to produce high quality atmospheric theatrical productions to promote theatre arts and multi-arts performances.