Strange days indeed
It was 15 years ago when Victor Fung Lok-hang first became fascinated with Albert Camus' existentialist novel , which is titled or in English.
L’ÉTRANGER
Victor Fung Dance
It was 15 years ago when Victor Fung Lok-hang first became fascinated with Albert Camus' existentialist novel , which is titled or in English.
As a teenager, he was taken by the notion that events in life are absurd. "Although I have become more optimistic, there's a part of me that is still influenced by Camus' words," he says.
By the time the dancer-choreographer started to explore the foundation of a "performative portrait", by which he aims to capture a character's physical and internal essence through movement and abstraction, Camus' complex story about an inexplicable murder case naturally came to mind.
Created via some movement research he conducted during residencies in Romania and Britain, (2013) was a solo dance piece in which Fung reimagined the novel through the perspective of its protagonist Meursault, the murderer.
"It was never in my agenda to retell the story through dance, because words are far better at delivering a narrative," says Fung, who performed in the piece's Hong Kong production, but cast another dancer in the role for its London performances.
"One dance writer said that the piece could hardly be considered dance in the traditional sense — and it was then that I realised I was on the right track. I was working on something that was less about recycling well-tested formulas than challenging the perception of what a dance performance should be."
"The creative process is as much about developing these characters as it is about the performers' embodiment of them in their performance," says Fung of his ensemble, which includes Hugh Cho, Lam Po, Max Lee, Kenny Leung and Justyne Li Sze-yeung.
The soundtrack is a result of his collaboration with Polish composer Sabio Janiak, who provided the music for .
Fung recently performed in Tino Seghal's at the Tate Modern in London, a work that he considers "a challenge both physically and mentally". But it's his Young Artist Award from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2013 that has kept him thinking.
"The award is a good reminder that I have been involved in dance for 13 years, and how the journey has really influenced who I am as a person," he says.
