Hong Kong dance company explores the question of whether to leave the city or stay, in modern dance theatre production Home Sweat Home
- The multilingual performance by the City Contemporary Dance Company looks at the sensitive and relevant issue of leaving Hong Kong
- CCDC artistic director Ng likens the current sentiment in Hong Kong to the lead up to the 1997 handover
Many of Bruce Wong’s close friends have left Hong Kong in the past couple of years. Some, he says, were fellow artists at the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC), where Wong holds the position of rehearsal master.
“Weighing up whether to leave Hong Kong is an emotional issue,” Wong says. “I have a two-year-old daughter, so I have to think about what is best for my family.”
The issue of whether to stay in Hong Kong is a sensitive one, compounded by media reports in August that 90,000 people have left in the past year, marking a 1.2 per cent drop in the city’s population.
The theme of home and whether to uproot and leave it is central to Home Sweat Home, a modern dance theatre production by the CCDC that premieres on November 13 at Freespace, in the West Kowloon Cultural District’s Art Park. Other shows will be held on November 14, 18, 19 and 20.
Delivered in a mix of languages and dialects – including Cantonese, Chiuchow, Shanghainese, Taishanese and English – Home Sweat Home features original music by Rick Lau and Anna Lo, and explores the issues of language and identity through dance. It is also one of the first projects by Yuri Ng, who took over the role of CCDC artistic director in January.
Born in Hong Kong, Ng left to study in Canada and later took on roles with its National Ballet School. He also spent a year at the Royal Ballet School in London, before returning to Hong Kong in 1993. He says the sentiment in the city today reminds him of the lead-up to the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from Britain to China. At that time, emigrants were also motivated by a sense of the unknown.
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“I wanted to explore this topic of home and the uncertainty people are feeling about the future […] I’ve witnessed a whole generation of Hongkongers wanting to find a more secure place to live,” he says.
Ng asked each of the 11 artists in the show to share their stories and thoughts on coming and going, with their responses shaping the production’s choreography.
“‘Go’ and ‘stay’ seem like simple words. But when you take the step to go, it takes a bit of guts,” he says. “Some had more solid answers about staying and going. Others are trying to figure it out, so I think everyone got something out of this project.”
