Award Recipients  |  2003

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Abby Chan was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 for her ingenious choreography of Pipe Dream for the City Contemporary Dance Company Three Means Fantasy production. In Pipe Dream, Chan looks at contemporary communication and the role that Internet chat-rooms play in fashioning alternate personas for their users and abusers. On the way, she cheerfully subverts the notion that honesty is not necessarily the best policy and skewers the modern art form of dissembling. Chan has the uncanny ability to poke fun at eminently preposterous facets of contemporary life that have somehow managed to worm their way into respectability, tickling the objects of her ridicule. In the process she lets us laugh at ourselves and enjoy the foibles of our all-too-human nature.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 was awarded to DanceArt Hong Kong for its Beautiful Life Series that cogently and dauntlessly addresses issues at the heart of Hong Kong's social fabric. DanceArt Hong Kong has consistently been at the forefront of arts as a medium for change and served as a model for the need for artists to be fully engaged in their community. Countless individuals such as those who are wheelchair assisted, those with special physical or emotional needs, those living with AIDS/HIV+, and other often-marginalized constituencies have been given a voice through the work of DanceArt in their Beautiful Life Series. We all benefit and are humanized by their sterling example.

Conrad Dy Liacco, who received the Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 for over a decade of consistent artistry as a dancer with the Hong Kong Ballet. Dy Liacco joined the company in 1991 and has been most successful and memorable in portraying comic character roles, including Dr. Coppelius in Coppelia, the Dancing Master in Cinderella, Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the leading imp in Petal Miller-Ashmole's The Snow Queen, Alain in La Fille Mal Gardee, and Marshall He in the Company's original production Mu Lan.

Gabriel Fung received the Hong Kong Dance Awards 2003 for his luminous lighting design of the Hong Kong Dance Company production of Zhang Shouhe and Zhang Yuanchun's choreography Water Margin. Based on a classical Chinese literary work, Water Margin is an epic dance with grand atmosphere and numerous characters, which portrays the characters's interior struggle between duty and friendship. Fung's design employs rich lighting effects to render the intense contrast between loneliness and the pandemonium of the external world.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 was presented to Lim Chee-keat for his brilliant performance in Xing Liang's choreography of That Moment for the production of Everything Falls Awayi. In That Moment, Lim transforms Liang's choreography into an eloquent and plangent soliloquy of a man's struggle with his interior demons and the imagined exterior forces opposing him. Lim controls the stage with his masterful articulation of the multifaceted nuance of the moving human body. All attention is focused on the expression of his limbs and trunk as he hurtles through space or simply stands still, expectant, in this tour de force of the art of dance performance.

Qiao Yang received the Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 for her powerful performance in the role of Jocasta in Helen Lai's dance retelling of the Oedipus myth, The Tragedy of Mr. O. As Jocasta. Qiao establishes the female centrality of this tragic Greek tale. Qiao's performance is the devastated heart around the chaotic whirlwind of Oedipus' horrible unraveling. Qiao's formidable portrayal of Jocasta establishes her as a modern dance icon. As she surveys the ruins about her, Qiao's every nuanced gesture is weighted with the inevitability of the tragedy that befalls her husband, son, and lover. Each movement is suffused with the inescapable horror that she endures. In a simple turn of the head, or the exhalation of breath, Qiao conveys volumes.

Peter Suart received the Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 for his inspired musical composition for Willy Tsao, Xing Liang, and Sang Ji-jia's choreography for the City Contemporary Dance Company production of 365 Ways of Doing and Undoing Orientalism. In his music Suart reflects and amplifies the complex notion of Orientalism, explicated by the choreographers in the work. Suart's artful use of traditional references as well as the fusion of diverse contemporary sources in his work aptly creates the microcosm within which the choreographers explores their ideas. Suart's work forms a dialogue with the choreography, never leading or being led by it, but becoming inseparable with our understanding of it.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 was awarded to Sui Wang-ngai for his superlative dance photography published in the book, The Hong Kong Ballet. Sui's work encompasses over eight years of work and photographs of twenty-five different ballets from the Hong Kong Ballet Company repertory. From his first photographic encounter with the Hong Kong Ballet's Nutcracker production onward, Sui has demonstrated his fascination and dedication to recording this most illusive art in exemplary photos that serve as inspiration and documentation for generations to come, allowing them to savor the artistry of this most fleeting art.

The Hong Kong Dance Award 2003 was presented to Yang Yun-tao for his outstanding performances in the Hong Kong Dance Company productions of Ding Wei's choreography Ma and Le Visiting the Sky. The dance is based on a Chinese Minority story, in which the main character experiences different phases in his life, with contrasting emotional states. With his strong background in Chinese Minority dance and Modern Dance, Yang employed his expressive body language and excellent technique to successfully portray the role, and give the dance its soul.

City Contemporary Dance Company's exceptional youth dance company Young Sky received the Hong Kong Dance Award 2003. In its Young Sky programme, the City Contemporary Dance Company continues its long term commitment to youth that has characterized its activities since its founding. Young Sky enables youngsters to meaningfully participate in the art of dance through focused productions of the highest quality while at the same time providing audiences with exhilarating performances. From amongst the ranks of Young Sky come the artists who will transform the future of Hong Kong dance.