Review: Little Pieces – Dominic Wong’s meditation on memory shows new maturity

Little Pieces, Dominic Wong Dick-man’s new, full-length creation for the City Contemporary Dance Company, is a striking, ambitious work in which Wong attains a new level of maturity and confidence as a choreographer.

The title refers to the idea that memory is a puzzle made up of many pieces, a fragmentary picture of experiences, relationships and emotions, some remembered, some missing.

The piece opens with Together, a haunting, elegiac solo by Qiao Yang, accompanied by her own voice, recalling her life in dance and her beloved late sister (represented by a figure standing in the background high above the stage).

Progressing from classroom ballet steps to modern dance and incorporating excerpts from work by Helen Lai Hoi-ling that Qiao has performed, it charts both her development as a dancer and her emotional journey in life.

After that the mood changes sharply, with the rest of the work set to driving electronic music.

Yuen Hon-wai’s designs have the cast uniformly dressed in simple white and create a frame around the top of the stage with the trunk of a tall tree half seen, half hidden at the back.