CCDC at East Kowloon Cultural Centre
In late October, the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC), Hong Kong’s leading modern dance company, premiered a double-bill programme at the new East Kowloon Cultural Centre. It consisted of the company’s premiere of a 2004 work “Sleepless” by Jiri Kylian, as well as a new work “a/ch” by Sang Jijia, the current artistic director of the company.
Jiri Kylian is a famous Czech modern dance choreographer, and was the artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater from 1978 to 1999, and continued to serve as a house choreographer till 2009.
His “Sleepless”, which is set to music by Dirk Haubrich, shows good craftsmanship, and skill in building tension, logic, and atmosphere from the steps. The highlight of this piece is a succession of four duets in a row. The duets are cold and distant, and the steps are sharp and angular. The whole work is bleak with a dark background. Towards the end, a girl dances with her shadow projected onto the backdrop.
The second work “a/ch” by Sang Jija is also sombre, and has a total of 13 dancers who play with rows of chairs and also geometric shapes such as cubes, and rearrange them into different combinations. Spoken dialogue is also used in addition to music by Kung Chi-sing and Oliver Cong. As in the previous work, dancers are sometimes seen with mirror images of themselves on the backdrop.
There is a good variety of duets, trios and quartets. However, the various parts of this work “a/ch” seem detached and do not form a coherent whole. Nevertheless, the dancers were all superb in both pieces.
This CCDC programme was the closing programme of the week-long City Contemporary Dance Festival which also featured overseas companies. It would be beneficial for the CCDC to stage more of Kylian’s works in future.
Finally, a word on the new East Kowloon Cultural Centre which opened last year. It consists of a Hall with a capacity of 1200, where the CCDC performances took place, a Theatre with a capacity of 536, as well as three smaller venues. Its location near to Kowloon Bay MTR station is convenient and easy to access.
Photo by Carmen So – CCDC in Sleepless
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