Award Recipients  |  2004

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The 2002 Distinguished Achievement Award is awarded to Professor Anna Pao Sohmen and Ms Cissy Pao for long-term contributions and achievements in dance. In presenting Distinguished Achievement Awards to Professor Sohmen and Ms Pao, the Hong Kong Dance Alliance honors their untiring efforts on behalf of dance and their vision in helping to establish professional dance as a cornerstone of Hong Kong culture.

Anna Pao Sohmen's steadfast allegiance to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts is manifest in her founding of the Society for the Academy for Performing Arts (SAPA) and her Chairmanship of the Council for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. SAPA scholarships have allowed countless Hong Kong and overseas students to study dance at the Academy. As Council Chairman she has enabled the Academy to grow into an internationally recognized, prize-winning institution, with the School of Dance one of its most accomplished components. Cissy Pao's commitment to the Hong Kong Ballet is evident in her continuous hard work on its behalf. In her role as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Hong Kong Ballet, Cissy Pao has been an indispensable leader whose dedication has given shape to the artistic achievement of the company. As the organizer of successive and highly successful Ballet Balls, she has helped provide the means for the company to realize these achievements.

Professor Sohmen and Ms Pao's engagement in dance goes beyond their leadership roles in two of Hong Kong's great cultural institutions. Both are accomplished businesswomen and advocates of culture, particularly in the dance area. In their dedication to dance, both love to dance. Anna Pao Sohmen and Cissy Pao are exemplars for all Hong Kong dancers to emulate; they are worthy of our greatest esteem and our sincerest gratitude.

The 2002 Distinguished Achievement Award is awarded to Professor Anna Pao Sohmen and Ms Cissy Pao for long-term contributions and achievements in dance. In presenting Distinguished Achievement Awards to Professor Sohmen and Ms Pao, the Hong Kong Dance Alliance honors their untiring efforts on behalf of dance and their vision in helping to establish professional dance as a cornerstone of Hong Kong culture.

Anna Pao Sohmen's steadfast allegiance to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts is manifest in her founding of the Society for the Academy for Performing Arts (SAPA) and her Chairmanship of the Council for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. SAPA scholarships have allowed countless Hong Kong and overseas students to study dance at the Academy. As Council Chairman she has enabled the Academy to grow into an internationally recognized, prize-winning institution, with the School of Dance one of its most accomplished components. Cissy Pao's commitment to the Hong Kong Ballet is evident in her continuous hard work on its behalf. In her role as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Hong Kong Ballet, Cissy Pao has been an indispensable leader whose dedication has given shape to the artistic achievement of the company. As the organizer of successive and highly successful Ballet Balls, she has helped provide the means for the company to realize these achievements.

Professor Sohmen and Ms Pao's engagement in dance goes beyond their leadership roles in two of Hong Kong's great cultural institutions. Both are accomplished businesswomen and advocates of culture, particularly in the dance area. In their dedication to dance, both love to dance. Anna Pao Sohmen and Cissy Pao are exemplars for all Hong Kong dancers to emulate; they are worthy of our greatest esteem and our sincerest gratitude.

Abby Chan was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for her performance of the Chosen One in Yuri Ng's Rite of Spring. Chan's exquisite control of her instrument, from the barely perceptibly tremble of an arm to full-out pratfalls, and the fluency with which she invests each movement with emotional resonance, results in a masterful interpretation of Ng's work. In her brilliant performance, Chan gambols through the role of the Chosen One with the long-legged naturalness of a colt frisking about in a sunlit meadow. Her every gesture is true, simple and full of power, yet there is no showboating, no bombast; it is as if dancing for her were as instinctive as breathing, as customary as brushing her hair, yet what she achieves is as singular as taking to flight.

Anna Chan was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for her authorship of Intelligent Moves: Dance Education. In this beautifully written and cogently presented guide for teachers, Chan presents logical examples to help teachers embrace dance education within the broader framework of arts education. Using a three-pronged approach to teaching dance in the schools: dance making, performing, and appreciating, Intelligent Moves provides teachers with the inspiration to develop their own significant contributions to the study of dance. Chan’s work directs teachers toward a philosophy of dance education that allows dance to fulfill its role as an important means for students to achieve their full learning potential. It is a seminal work and a great leap forward in the affirmation of dance as an essential component of Hong Kong culture.

The Hong Kong Ballet was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for its production of Natalie Weir's Turandot. This spectacular production was an inspiring and challenging project for all concerned. Choreographer Natalie Weir streamlined Puccini's opera and focused on its emotional aspects enabling the Hong Kong Ballet dancers to exhibit their dramatic and expressive dancing. The work demonstrated the ability of this company of classically trained artists to assume roles that demanded them to approach work that is more usually staged for contemporary dancers. In doing so, the Hong Kong Ballet dancers were able to adeptly show strengths and nuance far removed from the classical repertory and reveal the contemporary face of this fine company.

Ng Sze-wan was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for community work with and choreography for the Breeze Across Us experimental dance production Touch & Move. Breeze Across Us, the brainchild of visual artist, Iris Lihua Zhuang and choreographer/dancer, Ng Sze-wan, is a voluntary art group that promotes integration of visually impaired and sighted people. Their joint collaboration sought to develop an innovative performance in a touchable installation. The result, Touch & Move enabled the experience of the beauty of art in the absence of eyesight. The performance together with a three-month touch-art, dance and movement workshop was a model of collaboration, and demonstrated the power that is unleashed when diverse groups work together.

Yuri Ng was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for choreography of the Rite of Spring. In this luminously subversive work, Ng adroitly deconstructs the pagan ritual of the original Le Sacre du Printempts and its theme of propitiation by developing motifs of conjuring and descent. Building his images in successions of free associations, Ng's ideas loop back on themselves; take detours, savor their development, or proceed simply and directly. Using ordinary objects and references to popular culture and film with great facility, Ng deftly lampoons the Philistine's demand for tricks and the snob's rant against populism while still addressing the score's undercurrents of innocence lost and the common weal. What results is a sublime undermining of the distinction between sacrificial lamb and scapegoat and an interrogation of the inescapable inevitability of sacrifice.

Eriko Ochiai was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for her performances in leading roles with the Hong Kong Ballet. Ochiai's brilliant technique, superb acting ability, sensitivity, and musicality propelled her to the rank of Principal Dancer as the capstone of a splendid fifteen-year career with the Hong Kong Ballet. During 2003, she danced leading roles as diverse as Odette and Odile in Swan Lake; Princess Aurora, Fairy of the Songbirds and Princess Florine (Bluebird pas de deux) in The Sleeping Beauty; Liu in Turandot; Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. Critics and audiences have been unequivocal in their praise of Ochiai, she is regularly voted 'Favorite Female Principal Dancer' and 'Dancers' Dancer of the Season' by her company, and her commitment to her art and to the Hong Kong Ballet have made her an exemplary role model for other dancers.

Su Shu was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for her performances in leading roles with the Hong Kong Dance Company. Su is a virtuoso performer, whose artistry, broad dramatic palette, technical prowess, and powerful command of the stage have made her a favorite of audiences and critics alike in the wide-ranging roles she has danced. In 2003, Su demonstrated her lyricism and dynamism in the duet in Broken Bridge in Misty Rain and the lead dancer in Cai Gu in the production, A Vast Land, Diverse People. In Pinocchio, again the lead dancer as well as Fairy, she infused her work with a deep felt commitment and joy. In The Four Beauties Su's flexibility and her ability to span varied roles was superbly demonstrated by her dancing the roles of Wang Zhaojun and Yang Guifei.

Taurus Wah was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for Open Daily productions that brought Hong Kong and overseas artists together for innovative, inspiring, and exciting performances. In the daring Fetish Stories, DV8 Robert Tannion's choreographic exploration of the ordinariness and seediness of obsession were beautifully interpreted by Hong Kong's finest freelance dancers. In Search of Eileen Chang saw the transcendent dancing of Taipei's Crossover Dance Company artists perform in Hong Kong choreographer, Helen Lai's Voices and Taipei choreographer, Lo Man Fei's Handful of Dust. In Formless, local audiences were treated to a chance to create their own dance experience as they moved through Hong Kong artists Jamsen Law and Wong Chi-fai's environments viewing the dancing of Japanese artists Yaiju Matsumoto and Mao Arata. In its productions, Open Daily has brought a new vista to Hong Kong dance and placed it squarely at the forefront of international attention.ata. In its productions, Open Daily has brought a new vista to Hong Kong dance and placed it squarely at the forefront of international attention.

Andy Wong was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for his performance in the one-man show, And Then. In his performance of the diverse dances from this solo programme, Wong amply demonstrates his artistic maturity and an approach echoed elsewhere in this amazing artist's work in dance. Wong has a deep respect for dance, sincerity in his presentation of dance, and an ability to integrate his social concerns with his artistic vision that is singular. Wong's discipline and physical control are tempered by a calm determination to allow each of the dances to speak. Through his performance, we are invited to share in the imagination of the choreographer. Throughout his performance, Wong's deep love of dance, his joy in moving is palpable and infectious, enabling us to take part in his ecstasy.

Xing Liang was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2004 for his performance in the City Contemporary Dance Company production of The Enigma of Desire: Dali vs Gala. In this highly evocative work, which he jointly choreographed and performed with Mui Cheuk-yin, Xing dominates the stage with his powerful and nuanced portrayal of the enigmatic surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Xing oscillates between the swaggering arrogance of a dandy to the cringing of a madman cornered by his fears, between the solicitude of a lover to the abuse of a thug. Xing reveals Dali, exhibits him; taking us on a journey through the labyrinth of Dali's psyche, drawing us into the rapture of his poetic imagination and dragging us through the terror of his insecurities.