Review | Hong Kong Ballet’s online festival marred at times by camerawork that obscures the dancing
- The troupe’s “turn(it)out” festival online makes up for its cancelled live season, with many of the pieces strongly danced and with striking choreography
- Unfortunately, the camerawork is often distracting, with too much emphasis on the film aspect and too little on the dancing. Cinderella is one exception
Undeterred by the cancellation of its planned live season at Freespace in the West Kowloon Cultural District because of the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong Ballet has taken the virtual route and put its turn(it)out festival online.
There are obvious advantages. For Hong Kong Ballet, the opportunity to reach a wider audience and the impetus to explore new ways of presenting its work; for viewers, the chance to watch, free of charge, most programmes whenever and wherever they like during a two-week period.
On the other hand, nothing can replace the electricity of live performance and there is no substitute for watching with your own eyes, and thus choosing what to focus on, as opposed to seeing only what the director chooses to show.
Ironically, the best example of virtual presentation in turn(it)out, The Orpheus Cabaret, is the one programme that could only be seen live via Zoom, because of music copyright issues. Relocated from the theatre to a bar in the city’s Central district, the unconventional site was used to excellent effect and filmmaker Andreas Guzman did a superb job of showing how creative filming can enhance dance rather than distract from it.
A refreshing, contemporary take on the myth of Orpheus seeking his lost wife Eurydice in the underworld, the work was divided into segments choreographed by different members of the company. Stand-outs included an impassioned solo for Luis Cabrera choreographed by Jonathan Spigner, a spiky, sinister trio for Opheus, Hades and Persephone by Kyle Lin Chang-yuan, and a haunting final duet by Li Lin.
The potential pitfalls of virtual dance and a “dance film” approach were evident in five(by)six, which comprises five short pieces by six choreographers, each introduced by its creator. In a “dance film”, unlike “filmed dance”, the language of film comes first and not the dancing.
The high point was rediscovering Justyne Li and Wong Tan-ki’s award-winning Galatea & Pygmalion, created for their own company in 2010. The clarity, originality and skill of the choreography and the profound emotion of the piece have lost none of their power, and it is performed beautifully for this festival by Nana Sakai and Shen Jie.
Also impressive is an excerpt from Beyond the Line, by Hong Kong-based Vietnamese choreographer Nguyen Ngoc Anh, whose striking choreography expresses the toughness and flexibility of bamboo and incorporates references to Vietnamese dance.
Handelwerk is the first piece created for the company by a new artist in residence, Stephen Shropshire – an American choreographer who lives in the Netherlands. The neoclassical choreography is solidly crafted but uninspired, and the constantly moving camera makes it hard to get a sense of the piece overall (not to mention inducing a sensation of seasickness). The saving grace is a splendid live rendition of Handel’s music by pianist Rachel Cheung.
Another new piece, artistic director Septime Webre’s Second Movement, also suffers from some vertiginous videography. Set to the second movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, this duet is packed with drama and Webre’s trademark acrobatic lifts. It is strongly danced by Chen Zhi-yao and Garry Corpuz, yet curiously at odds with the serenity of the music.
The worst victim of the virtual approach is Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Sombrerisimo. A playful, exuberant piece for six male dancers and a lot of hats previously performed by the company in 2018, it was sabotaged by Ochoa’s own video editing.
Her introduction made it clear this was a “dance film” and the use of handheld camera, nonstop jump cutting (not one solo was shown in full) and random close-ups (often, bizarrely, of dancers’ backs) may have been aimed at creating an immersive viewing experience seen from a dancer’s point of view.
The result is like watching a rugby match through a bodycam worn by one of the players: fast and furious, yet so messy and chaotic that it robbed this normally entertaining work of structure and coherence.
Moving from dark myths to sunny fairy tale, Cinderella is the latest instalment in the company’s popular Ballet Classics for Children series, reworked with sparkling classical choreography by Webre and gorgeous costumes by Yoki Lai. Kids can have fun learning about ballet, while grown-ups enjoy the dancing and the lovely Prokofiev score.
There’s a choice of English or Cantonese narration (plus an accessible version with the Arts with the Disabled Association). Lucas Yung Yin Sing combines the role of narrator and Ugly Stepmother with equal ebullience in both languages and there are two good casts, with Amber Lewis a particularly enchanting Cinders in the English version.
The turn(it)out programmes are completed by BINGE-WORTHY, a selection of performance extracts which makes a good sampler of the company’s work, along with an abundance of masterclasses and interviews.
