Dancing to a Hong Kong tune

The city's best performers head to Shanghai, Zhang Kun reports.

The Hong Kong SAR government has commissioned Hong Kong's modern dance flagship, the City Contemporary Dance Company, for two performances during the Expo 2010 Shanghai.

On June 19 and 20, City Contemporary Dance Company artistic director Willy Tsao will bring his creation of DELT, a dance gala, to Shanghai Times Square, and on June 25 at the Shanghai Grand Theater, the dance company will present Tales of Two Cities-Hong Kong-Shanghai-Eileen Chang.

Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century, whose works have inspired numerous award-winning films, including Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. She lived and worked in Shanghai and Hong Kong during times of political turmoil. Her stories, mostly short fiction, reveal an unsettling, probing and contemporary sensibility. The stories tackle sexual politics and are rich in psychological ambiguity.

Inspired from a rare photo of the writer during her final years in the United States and texts from her most well-known stories, four-time Hong Kong Dance Award winner Helen Lai created Tales of Two Cities especially for the Expo. Lai, critically acclaimed for her emotionally charged dance theatre, reconstructs the writer's life and times with intriguing flashbacks to her golden days.

"Eileen Chang was a prodigy - her best works were all written when she was in her 20s. How could one have such deep observations at such young age? She was really a very sensitive person," Lai said. "In my production, I try to present my impressions of Eileen Chang, or to imagine about her from a woman's point of view."

"Many of her stories are focused on women bound by traditional ideas. Women in these stories want to escape from lots of things, but are mostly unsuccessful. But I feel somehow she herself had succeeded. Many think her life in her later years was sad and solitary, but I think she enjoyed it, since it was out of her own choice," Lai said.

Lai has incorporated different music styles into the production. She boldly mixes northeastern Chinese folk music, the erhu, a traditional Chinese string instrument, and Western music. Sounds from insects, such as crickets, can also be heard during the show.

Meanwhile, DELT is tailored specifically for the environment of a shopping mall. The dancers from the City Contemporary Dance Company and Beijing Dance (also known as LDTX) don't perform on a conventional stage, but instead move fluidly around the crowds inside the mall, allowing visitors a rare chance to have an up close and personal experience with contemporary dance. In this highly interactive work, dance becomes everyday life and everyday life is transformed into dance. The audience will find themselves no longer just observers, but also participants, responsible for creating and completing the dance itself.

(China Daily 06/04/2010 page45)