Award Recipients  |  2001

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The 2001 Distinguished Achievement Award is awarded to Jean M. Wong in recognition of her long-term contribution to the development of Hong Kong dance. In her Hong Kong schools, for over forty years, and as an advocate of Hong Kong dance internationally, Jean Wong has devoted her life to the pursuit of excellence in dance. As a teacher of rare passion and dedication, she has raised an entire generation of classically trained dancers, teachers and dance lovers. More than any other individual, because of her single-minded dedication to the art of the dance, Ms. Wong is responsible for the elevation of the dance profession in Hong Kong. She has tirelessly given of her talents and energy to insure this development, not only in her teaching, but also in her frequent voluntary services for the public sector. In this latter category she has selflessly lent her expertise as member of the boards of directors, councils, and advisory committees to each of the three professional dance companies, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and the Arts Development Council, among others. Jean has found scholarships to assist talented students to continue their dance education. Jean can always be relied upon to offer sound, supportive advice and encouragement when students, dancers or choreographers enter a difficult patch in their careers. The Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Dance Alliance pay tribute to Jean M. Wong and her distinguished achievement and offer her, on behalf of all members of the Hong Kong dance community, our heartiest congratulations and our sincerest appreciation.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to the City Contemporary Dance Company Programming and Marketing Team for their innovative contribution to the Millennium All Independent Dance Series production of Strip Teaser. As an integral partner to the artistic side of City Contemporary Dance Company, its Programming and Marketing team is a major force in generating the ideas that enable the company to stand at the forefront of dance in Hong Kong. The team conceived of bringing together four internationally renowned Hong Kong fashion designers and seven up-and-coming local choreographers to provide an imaginative fusion of dance and couture for Hong Kong audiences. The result of this conception was to introduce modern dance to new audiences of ‘standing room only’ capacity crowds at the City Hall Concert Hall. The production also demonstrated that modern dance can be hip and sexy while still addressing serious issues.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Dominic Wong for his fully realized performance in Helen Lai’s Plaza X. Mr. Wong combines the insouciance of the man on the street with the lithe grace and power of a panther to mold a performance of profound depth and breadth. He is able to shift from lighthearted frolic to deeply felt emotion and establish a kinaesthetic empathy with his audience through his mastery of the performance art. He is the rare premier danseur whose substantial control of his craft is revealed through humble presentation. His first master is the choreographic expression and he abjures the temptation to which many other soloists succumb of self-promotion and the aggrandizement of technique for its own sake. Mr. Wong allows his audiences to see themselves in his performance, to connect with the choreographer’s ideas and not lose themselves in the overwhelming exploits of the superman.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Helen Lai for her innovative choreography of Plaza X in Hong Kong Arts Festival 2000. In Plaza X, Ms. Lai continues to stretch the bounds of choreographic experiment in a breathtaking exploration of time. The work, which utilizes multiple stage levels and areas in the fore and back of the stage as well as within the traditional proscenium arch, juxtaposes episodes of dancing with ice skating sequences. Through her deft use of these two movement mediums Lai creates absorbing metaphors that allow the audience to examine time’s discontinuity, suspension, and illusory nature. Lai demonstrates in her choreography for Plaza X her penchant for being a philosopher of dance. By rigorously demanding of her audience to pose questions for themselves about the nature of dance, at the same time she expands the possibilities of dance to pose questions about the very nature of existence.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to the Hong Kong Ballet Education and Outreach Unit for its production of Ballet in Sneakers for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department Community Cultural Ambassador Scheme. The work of the Hong Kong Ballet Education and Outreach Unit in transforming themes from classical ballet into contemporary expressions of the communities they serve through their workshops and in their production of Ballet in Sneakers excelled because of the strong commitment of all members of the team responsible for the effort: the director, Florence Liu; the coordinators, May Tsang and Dicky Tsang; the choreographer, Allen Lam; the scriptwriter, Kevin Ma and the performers, Shirley Loong, Ting Ping, Scarlet Wong, and Stephen Xavier. This highly talented group of artists dared to take their ideas to scores of communities and to invite them to share in the processes of creation and performance. The outcome of this adventure was the complete and highly satisfying integration of the worlds of select dance professionals with untrained children of all ages into a grand celebration of dance.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Li Yong-jing for her breakthrough performance in Csuba Buday’s Interiors for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts School of Dance. As a modern dance student, Ms Li may seem to have only just embarked on her journey as a professional artist. Her exquisite performance in a demanding lead role in Mr. Buday’s darkly sensuous work belies the brevity of her performance career, but in reality is the fruition of the score of years she has spent training in dance both in Guangzhou and in Hong Kong. Within this time she has assembled a prolific repertory of artistry and skills that culminated in her multifaceted interpretation of the many nuances in Mr. Buday’s work and herald even greater accomplishments as her talent matures.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Mui Cheuk-yin for her choreography of Whispering Colour for the Folkwang Tanzstudio. Ms. Mui is a poet of dance who in Whispering Colour constructs a pageant of dance images that wash across the stage in a kaleidoscope of movement odes. Her deep insight into Chinese culture coupled with her resolutely modern sensibility fuse in her work to establish a unique aesthetic that speaks with a singular voice, one that is completely new and yet firmly grounded in tradition. In her work with the Folkwang Tanzstudio, Ms. Mui transcends her time and place to create an ageless expression that articulates universal truths. She reveals the common thread that binds us to a common humanity.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Philip Morris Asia Limited for its innovative sponsorship of the site-specific spectacle Somewhere in the Past by the Railway. For the past twenty years, Philip Morris Asia Limited has devoted resources to establish and develop an increasingly significant partnership with dance in Hong Kong. Through encouragement and financial support, this partnership has immeasurably assisted Hong Kong’s dance development, enabling dance organizations to venture into untested artistic endeavors and take artistic risks that are essential to innovation. In its sponsorship of Somewhere in the Past by the Railway, Philip Morris Asia Limited enabled the audience to re-live the sensational episodes of Hong Kong’s migrant history and to join City Contemporary Dance Company dancers in a remembrance of a lost time at the site of the former Kowloon Canton Railway Terminus at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Piazza.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Rosalind Newman for her superb choreography of Dissolves for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts School of Dance. Ms. Newman has created in Dissolves a consummate work that echoes her lifelong concerns with the community of man, the individual’s place within that community, and the force of imagination, memory, and communication as tools that can forge understanding and respect for all. As a choreographer, Ms. Newman one of the outstanding 20th century masters. In Dissolves, she has created a solidly integrated work with completely original movement invention, forms derived solely from content, and content rich and replete with humanistic images. One comes away from her work fully emotionally satisfied, reaffirming life, gaining deeper understanding of its joys, sorrows, and mysteries and marveling at her depiction of the continuing dialogue between mankind and his circumstances.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Tommy Wong for his outstanding lighting design for the Hong Kong Dance Company production of Yellow River. Mr. Wong’s finely tuned sense of light and shadow, hue and tone thrusts Jiang Huaxuan’s exquisitely rich choreography to magnificently dazzling heights. His lighting accompanies and buoys the work through a gamut of complex states from shimmering stillness to the maelstrom of storm and the turmoil of flood. The ebb and flow of the choreography are expertly harmonized with the surge and wane of light. Mr. Wong’s design is a triumph of clarity and revelation in which he translates the choreographer’s vision into a palpable presence that never overshadows the choreography but works to amplify the work’s sweeping impact.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2001 is awarded to Yeung Wai-mei for her compelling choreography of Upstream, Downstream for the Millennium All Independent Dance Series production of Strip Teaser. In her sardonic exposition of ‘fashion’, Ms. Yeung exhibits her finely tuned acumen as social critic while maintaining a firm grip on the theatrical elements of surprise, wonder, revelation, and invention. In Upstream, Downstream, she has turned the world of haute couture on its head and created an alternate universe of strutting, wildly coiffed, severely costumed mannequins whose elegantly designed clothes and stylized movements are both a celebration of the pleasures as well as an exposé of the sinister potential and perils of fashion. In addressing the celebrity glamour inherent in the artificial world of the catwalk, she adeptly unmasks the dangers of conformity. She manages this stunning feat without relying on moralizing, but instead relishes in the anarchy of humor and the sensuality of the surreal.