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Natasha Rogai

Hong Kong Spring
Hong Kong Dance Company
Sheung Wan Municipal Services Building
Reviewed: Aug 23, 3pm
In recent years Hong Kong Dance Company  has seen troubled times artistically, but its 8/F Platform  workshop programmes have been  consistently bright, giving the dancers  room to experiment.
The latest offering, Hong Kong Spring,  is perhaps the strongest yet,  with a fruitful collaboration  featuring the talented and original local choreographer Daniel Yeung.  A small group of dancers (seven, in this case) choreograph as well as perform, so the work is a  joint effort.
Addressing issues such as their feelings about Hong Kong and the nature of Chinese dance, Hong Kong Spring is as much theatre as dance, with extensive use of dialogue which the dancers handle with  ease.
Yeung's influence shows in the humour  of the performance - a welcome departure for  the company, whose productions tend to take themselves too seriously. In one  tongue-in-cheek sequence, a text  of  its history is recited by different dancers in turn, acting out the words with a stream of visual puns.  In  Horses Keep On Racing, two  dancers (Yang Yuntao and Mi Tao), carrying the horse whips used in Chinese opera to signify that characters are riding, compete in an  spectacular series of operatic-based movements with a comic twist.
People Keep On Dancing is a hilarious portrayal of the mishaps and missteps  in choreographing, as Yang and Xie Yin struggle to create a duet, complete with pratfalls, near-strangulation and Xie's unavailing attempts to take her turn at lifting the tall, powerfully built Yang. Later, the sombre Lover's Tears closes with Yang and Xie dancing together.  In a  magical moment, the audience  watches the duet, whose  birth pangs it had witnessed shortly before, transformed into a thing of beauty, with Xie tenderly carrying her partner on her back at the end.
This thought-provoking, entertaining show is a tribute to the talent and enthusiasm  all who took part in staging it.



Hong Kong Spring