Profile | ‘I wanted to create something’: Hong Kong Ballet choreographer Ricky Hu on why he switched from dancing, and finding his artistic voice
- Born in China, Ricky Hu’s passion for dance led him to study in Shanghai and New York before becoming a dancer and ultimately a choreographer in Hong Kong
- Ahead of a new work featuring Leslie Cheung songs in the city’s International Gala of Stars programme, he opens up about his life and career
“I was in the shower when it came to me.” Ricky Hu Songwei, choreographer-in-residence of Hong Kong Ballet, is explaining how he found the inspiration for his award-winning 2022 work The Last Song.
The 37 year-old says he’d been wanting to do a piece set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, but hadn’t found the right theme. Then, mid-ablution, Oscar Wilde’s story The Nightingale and the Rose popped into his head.
A parable of romantic love, it’s about a bird that uses its last song to produce a red rose for a lovelorn but undeserving student. Hu chose an abstract treatment that explores the relationship between an artist and his muse, symbolised by the nightingale.
The Last Song received the Hong Kong Dance Award for Choreography and was commended for being “a memorable work, beautifully structured, technically assured, and above all, deeply moving”.
Hu was born in China’s Jiangxi province – better known for rice noodles than cutting-edge performing arts – but he fell in love with dance at the age of six after seeing it on television.
Government talent spotters came to his school and picked him to play piano. “When I heard that I had to learn piano, I was very sad, because I wanted to dance. After piano class I would run to watch the dance class,” he says.
Devil has the best tunes in double-bill dance show depicting heaven and hell
He pleaded with his mother, who agreed to take him to dance classes, and at age 11 Hu went to study full time at the prestigious Shanghai Dance School. Leaving home so young may sound hard, but Hu “couldn’t wait!”
He pays tribute to his parents, especially his mother, for their support. Jiangxi is very traditional, and some family members were worried that going away so young would make Hu “learn bad ways, but my mum never listened to them”.
Later, Hu’s studies took him even further away from home, including to the Alvin Ailey Company in New York on a scholarship. It was tough, he says, with classes in different dance genres every day from 8am to 6pm, plus auditions.
A classmate was keen to audition for another company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, and Hu went along to gain experience. Ironically, his classmate went out after the first round but Hu made it all the way to the end – one of just 10 dancers selected from 1,000 applicants.
However, aged just 19, he didn’t feel ready to join the company, and another scholarship took him to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA).
There, Hu enrolled in the contemporary dance stream, but a guest teacher from the Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) suggested he should try joining a ballet company because many also danced contemporary works and because he had a body suited to ballet.
When you relax, you have more space, you’re clearer on what you’re doing
When the RNZB performed in Shanghai he was invited to audition and was offered a job.
Fate intervened when John Meehan, then Hong Kong Ballet’s artistic director, who had heard about Hu’s Mark Morris audition, watched his graduation performance and asked what he was planning to do.
When he heard that Hu was about to join RNZB, he came up with a different offer.
Hong Kong had more appeal to Hu than New Zealand and in 2008 he joined the Hong Kong company’s corps de ballet. “So now I’ve been with the company for 15 years,” Hu says.
At Hong Kong Ballet, his lack of a ballet background left Hu struggling to keep up.
In those days the company had an annual choreographic workshop and Hu thought this would be an opportunity to learn something new.
Mixed performances, magical sets in Opera Hong Kong’s new Tosca
He signed up in his first year, then got cold feet. “I was very young and I was scared to pick the dancers, who were all senior to me.”
The following year he plucked up the courage to create his first piece. “When I started to do it, to choose the music, to see how to create the space on stage, it was very interesting. [That’s when] I started thinking seriously of changing from dancing to choreographing.”
Such creative partnerships between choreographers are rare. Hu says he learned a lot from the Okinawa, Japan-born Egami. Other early influences were Jiri Kylián and Alexander Ekman because “they make magic on stage”.
Soon he found his own style – creating a relationship between bodies and space on the stage rather than just focusing on the narrative.
Hu calls himself “a very emotional choreographer” who wants the dancers to feel like they are saying something to the audience.
His 2018 work When I See was a turning point in terms of finding his artistic voice. “That piece was very important for me; even though it was very short, it took me to the next step.”
The solo piece was inspired by a tragic event: in 2017 Hu and his wife lost their first child seven months into the pregnancy. “After that I wanted to create something to show the feelings and I started to create this piece, for my wife and for all women. Women are so strong, much, much stronger than men think they are.”
3 highlights from Hong Kong’s New Vision Arts Festival you won’t want to miss
The beautiful, profound piece is abstract yet conveys a heart-rending sense of loss and joy denied.
Happily, Hu and his wife are now the parents of a daughter, and in May this year, Hu named a well-received piece for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts after her.
This has been a busy year for Hu – he was artistic director of the Hong Kong Dance Awards gala performance and has created short pieces for mainland Chinese troupes, and for Hong Kong Ballet.
One of these will be performed at the company’s International Gala of Stars on November 2-3, which features principal dancers from the Royal Ballet, the Dutch National Ballet and the National Ballet of China.
In 2024, Hu has an exciting project lined up with Hong Kong Ballet and has been awarded a grant from the China National Arts Fund to create a work in China, where he has worked with different companies.
For now, he’s looking forward to taking a break and spending time at home in Shenzhen after 10 months of constant travel. How has being a father changed him? “No freedom!” he says with a laugh, then adds that he’s become more mature.
In the past he would go crazy when there were problems, “but now I’ve taught myself to calm down and think things through”.
“Before I wanted everything to be perfect. Now I think, ‘I tried my best, just let it go.’ No one is perfect. Just try your best. When you relax, you have more space, you’re clearer on what you’re doing.”
“Hong Kong Ballet: International Gala of Stars”, Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Nov 2-3, 7.30pm.
