This year's award recipients include Hong Kong Ballet for its Balanchine & Beyond programme, City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) for its production of Testimony, and Hong Kong Dance Company's Huang Lei for his performance in Dream Dances.

Hong Kong Ballet chief executive Helen Ng and film star Jackie Chan will also receive awards for their lifelong support of dance.

To make the event more than just an award presentation, the organisers have introduced a number of cross-over acts, as well as excerpts from last year's dance productions.

CCDC's Xing Liang will dance-jam to the music of percussion group Four Gig Heads, while Hong Kong Dance Company's Huang Lei and Tina Hua will team up with two Cantonese opera artists for a new work based on the Beijing opera Wu Song Da Dian.

Dancer/choreographer Yuri Ng Yue-lit says the event is an opportunity to bring together different genres to show the vibrant diversity of the local dance scene.

'I'd like to do a performance exchange where all these dances contrast with each other on stage,' says the three-time Dance Award winner who is also the artistic producer of the gala. 'It's safe for someone to keep doing the same thing, but I think it's important to explore how others do their work.'

Also included in the gala programme are: an excerpt from Once in a Secret Night, a Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) dance school production; a medley from the musical Chicago performed by former beauty queen-turned-musical performer Marsha Yuan Ji-wai and Gigi Yiu Wing-chi; and a tap dance number by mother and son team HKAPA lecturer Mandy Petty and Michael Lin.

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