Hugh Jackman Promotes 'Pan,' Joins Hong Kong Dragon Dance
Hamptons visitor Hugh Jackman hasn’t been seen on the East End much these days, but he seems to have no qualms about traveling abroad. The Wolverine actor, who’s not shy about popping claws or shaking his groove thing, attended Hong Kong’s Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance Festival on Monday, September 28.
In Hong Kong promoting Warner Brothers’ new Peter Pan movie Pan—in which he plays the pirate Blackbeard—Jackman uploaded a video to his Instagram account featuring him speaking to fans in Chinese and sharing his excitement to be at the Tai Hang festival.
An annual tradition in Hong Kong, the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance Festival celebrates how, in the 19th century, people in the village of Tai Hang miraculously stopped a plague with a fire dragon dance. That dance is now reenacted every year when as many as 300 dancers perform the fire dragon—made up of 72,000 sticks of burning incense and a nearly 200-foot-long dragon—through the narrow streets of Tai Hang.
Jackman, who joined the dragon dance procession and high-fived fans on the walk through Tai Hang, has also recently appeared at Pan film premieres in the United States, England and in Australia, his home country.
Directed by Joe Wright and co-starring Levi Miller (Terra Nova, Supergirl), Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network) and Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy, Inside Llewyn Davis), Pan tells the story of Peter, an orphan who ends up in the magical world of Neverland, where he encounters good times and peril before discovering his destiny to become Peter Pan.
The film opens on Friday, October 9. Watch the trailer below.