Cover The Hong Kong Dance Company performed ‘A Dance of Celestial Rhythms’ in July 2025 (Photo: Instagram/@hkdancecompany)
The Hong Kong Dance Company performed ‘A Dance of Celestial Rhythms’ in July 2025 (Photo: Instagram/@hkdancecompany)
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The Hong Kong Dance Company celebrates its 45th anniversary this year with five major productions, including a Bruce Lee-inspired drama show, a classic Chinese love story and a show capturing an ink art master’s work
The Hong Kong Dance Company will celebrate its milestone 45th anniversary in 2026—and at a press conference on July 3, it announced the line-up for its new season, beginning in September 2025.
The season will open with the rerun of A Dance of Celestial Rhythms, a production inscribed on Unesco’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016 for its brilliance in capturing the Chinese concept of the solar terms.
A major highlight this season is the dance drama Kung Fu Artistry—Bruce Lee’s No Way as Way, which will premiere in November. The company chose to present this work in 2025 to mark the 85th anniversary of the martial artist’s birth. “As a company, our mission is to serve as a centre for cultural exchange between the East and the West,” says Yang Yuntao, artistic director of the Hong Kong Dance Company, who spent eight years preparing for the show, including taking dancers to train in the basics of Lee’s famous Jeet Kune Do. “We use dance to capture Bruce Lee’s spirit rather than mimicking his moves directly. This is something I’m sure he would have approved of. His spirit is about pushing ourselves until we reach our best state. He was a phenomenon born from cultural exchange between the East and the West. He introduced the West to the power and spirit of Chinese martial arts.”
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Above From left: Yang Yuntao, Ivana Wong and the dancers of the Hong Kong Dance Company as MCs at the press conference (Photo: Tatler Hong Kong)
From left: Yang Yuntao, Ivana Wong and the dancers of the Hong Kong Dance Company as MCs at the press conference (Photo: Tatler Hong Kong)
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Another new production is Peony Pavilion Awakening, which will debut in March next year. The dance adaptation captures the poignancy and love between a maiden and scholar from the Ming dynasty’s iconic Kunqu opera The Peony Pavilion.
This year, Canto-pop singer-songwriter Ivana Wong will compose the music for In Between—Wu Guanzhong’s Ink Odyssey, a production celebrating the towering Chinese ink art figure Wu Guanzhong, who pioneered modern Chinese painting by merging Chinese ink philosophies with Western aesthetics.
Wong describes the production as “a way of respect for Wu Guanzhong through working with different media of art”.
Above A poster of the Hong Kong Dance Company’s 45th anniversary (Image: Instagram/@hkdancecompany)
A poster of the Hong Kong Dance Company’s 45th anniversary (Image: Instagram/@hkdancecompany)
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Hong Kong Dance Company has also invited two light designers from France to collaborate under its partnership with French May. Yang explains that France’s stature as a global arts centre made this cross-cultural exchange a natural choice—echoing Wu’s own journey as an artist who studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1947. While language was a challenge, the artistic collaboration among dancers, musicians and light designers served as a powerful moment of cultural convergence.
The new season promises to be a celebration of Hong Kong icons, Chinese cultural heritage and contemporary artistic innovation.
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
