The following day, a big party at the West Kowloon Cultural District marked the “30th anniversary” of the Hong Kong Dance Alliance (HKDA), presenter of the annual awards since 1999. The highlight was a special performance of Double Happiness: The Promise of Red, Mui Cheuk-yin’s new work for the inaugural “Freespace Dance” festival, which celebrates visionary women choreographers.

Separately, “Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels”, a new annual festival, will also take place from May 5 to 21 at multiple venues.

“It was so exciting to see so many dance practitioners in the same room, maskless for the first time in three years,” says Shirley Loong, executive director of the alliance, about the dance awards presentation. “Covid affected us all both physically and mentally and dancers are no exception, but we will all recover from it and some have already recovered.”

She says one trend emerging from the pandemic is the growing incorporation of new technology, such as virtual reality.

‘Intelligent and original’: Hong Kong’s Siu Lung Fung Dance Theater’s ‘Run’

Tsang Tsui-shan’s Chroma 11, which won “Outstanding Small Venue Production”, was a particularly novel approach to combining dance and technology.

In 2019, Tsang, a filmmaker, made a short film called Ward 11 that documented the life and work of dance partners and lovers Ix Wong Thien-pau and Aaron Khek Ah-hock during the final stages of Khek’s life.

In 2022, this was shown together with a new virtual reality epilogue, also made with Wong, which created, with devastating poignancy, a pas de deux for one who is living and one who is dead.

Terry Tsang, who clinched the “Tom Brown Emerging Choreographer” prize, won with his online “Labora-Terry Landscape” series, a clever staging and merging of old and new works that creates a memorable digital experience for the audience.

Tech or no tech, the winners are united in their passion for their art, Loong says.

‘Don’t try this at home’: the dance craze taking over Chinese social media

Below, past and present winners of the Hong Kong Dance Awards talk about their careers and new projects coming up later this year:

1. Ricky Hu Songwei

The choreographer-in-residence of the Hong Kong Ballet, who won the “Outstanding Choreography” award for The Last Song, joined the ballet troupe in 2008 as a dancer. Two years later, he tried his hand at choreography during an annual workshop for dancers. In 2019, he moved full-time to choreography.

“I studied Chinese folk dance in high school and contemporary dance in university. So I have always combined Chinese culture, folk dance elements and contemporary dance elements into my ballet choreographies,” Hu says.

On May 5, his latest piece, called Yi Yi, will be performed by students of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA). Co-created with his wife, Mai Jingwen, it is named after the couple’s daughter.

“It is not only a gift to our daughter, but a message to both her and the [HKAPA] graduates,” Hu says.

“‘Yi yi’ in Chinese means ‘very simple’. I hope this abstract piece will deliver the message to keep life very simple and see it as a process of reaching your goals step by step.”

Yi Yi will be part of the “School of Dance Summer Performances”, Academy Lyric Theatre, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, May 5-6, 8pm and May 6, 3pm.

2. Noel Pong

Noel Pong has been with the CCDC since 1997 and became its artist-in-residence in 2019.

Winner of the “Outstanding Choreography Award” in 2012, Pong is getting a new work ready, called Echo in the Mirror, which will be performed in mid-May as part of a double bill with Terry Tsang’s Travel of Soul Time After Time.

This is the story of her life as a dancer, especially over the past three years, Pong says.

“The ensemble consists of dancers that widely range in their ages and experiences, from the youngest dancer who has only been with the CCDC for a year, to someone who joined a year earlier than me. In some ways, it feels like each of them is me in different phases of my dancing career.”

“Travel of Soul Time After Time & Echo in the Mirror”, City Contemporary Dance Company, Auditorium, Kwai Tsing Theatre, May 12-13, 8pm, May 14, 3pm.

3. Kelvin Mak

Mak says he set up the company in 2017 to provide an alternative platform for dancers that came from non-traditional backgrounds.

Large dance companies only allow those with “proper” training to join, he says, excluding many talented dancers.

At Beyond Dance Theatre, shows always include dramatic, theatrical elements, with strong themes. They are always physically and mentally taxing, and require performers to be at the height of their powers, he says.

As part of the group’s mission to make dance more accessible, Beyond Dance Theatre will hold a training course for members of the public in September, through which participants can experience the life of a dance professional.