So you think you can dance? Well, I thought I could - that's what we do when we go clubbing, right? - until I was once asked to move to the music in an improvisation exercise. I just froze. I'd never thought I was such a gawk. What was I supposed to do with my hands, arms, legs, feet and so on?
I found myself in a similar 'uh-oh' situation again recently when I took part in a pilot in-house workshop that the Hong Kong Sinfonietta had organised for its musicians and administrative staff, including music director Yip Wing-sie. It's just a stretching session, I was reassured.
But I should have known better because the instructor was Yuri Ng Yue-lit, an award-winning choreographer and the current artist associate with the ensemble.
I first met Ng in the late 1990s, a few years after he returned from Canada where he danced and choreographed. Classically trained, the former Genee International Ballet Competition gold medallist is one of the most thoughtful and creative artists on the local performing arts scene. He has collaborated with all three of this city's major dance companies and his latest stint with the Sinfonietta - whom he first worked with in 2005 in The Devil's Tale - is expected to enrich the concert experience. Their latest project is the Know Your Ballet Music concerts, which will be held at the Hong Kong City Hall on the August 27 weekend.
But back to the dance studio at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts where I was struggling to co-ordinate my limbs in a number of warm-up exercises.
There was one in which we all had to walk backwards, using only the mirror in front of us as our guide. Needless to say I was the last to reach the other side of the studio. The highlight of the 90-minute session, though, was when Ng asked us to 'interact' with an ordinary object as if it was part of our body and to come up with a 'routine'. Some of us chose water bottles, others umbrellas and I used a rolled-up newspaper as my prop. Then after about 10 minutes of experimenting, Ng asked us to repeat our routine without the object and - voila! - a piece of contemporary dance choreography. A couple of girls came up with steps that would not have looked out of place in a dance performance.
