As winter solstice nears, how the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar inspired 2 original Hong Kong performances

The Hong Kong Dance Company’s A Dance of Celestial Rhythms uses traditional Chinese folk dance to recall the ancient relationship between humans and nature

Olivia Yan’s one-woman show You Yuan highlights eight solar terms to abstractly and conceptually depict the idea of femininity

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A scene from the Hong Kong Dance Company’s “A Dance of Celestial Rhythms”, which explores the philosophy of the 24 solar terms of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar - the most important of which, the winter solstice, starts on December 22 in 2023. Photo: Hong Kong Dance Company

Published: 5:15pm, 21 Dec 2023Updated: 6:24pm, 22 Dec 2023

To open its 2023/24 season, the Hong Kong Dance Company commissioned an original work that explores the philosophy behind the “24 solar terms”. Titled A Dance of Celestial Rhythms, the “dance poem” interprets the passage of time through music and movement.

“The concept of the 24 solar terms is about time,” explains Ella Xie Yin, the piece’s associate choreographer. “However, it’s also another way of looking at the passing of time that is different from our industrialised daily lives. It’s about weather, nature and humans.”

The 24 solar terms are specific points in the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar that signify natural phenomena and the changing of seasons, and have been a crucial component of Chinese culture and traditions for thousands of years.

The calendar – devised by the ancient Chinese to optimise agricultural production – includes six terms in each of the four seasons, dividing the year into equal segments based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun. The most important of them all will begin on December 22 this year: the winter solstice.

Xie is not the first artist in 21st-century Hong Kong to have been inspired by this ancient wisdom.