Anna CY Chan

A legend in Hong Kong’s dance community, Anna CY Chan is now also the key figure in the city’s performing arts education after taking over as director of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2025.

Chan has worked in the field for over three decades, having started off as a professional dancer. She has won a Hong Kong Dance Award in three separate decades, in 2004, 2019 and 2023. She was dean of the HKAPA’s School of Dance from 2018 to 2024, a period when the school grew its range of international collaborations and also sharpened its emphasis on socially beneficial projects.

Before that, she was head of dance at the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority from 2014 to 2018, helping to shape the district’s approach to contemporary dance, and remains a member of its Performing Arts Committee. She has also previously been head of the HKAPA’s Performing Arts Education Centre. With an extensive history of academic publications, she is also a professor at the HKAPA and, since 2020, a visiting professor at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing.

She is also the president of the World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific; a director of Tai Kwun and chairwoman of its Culture and Arts Programme Committee; the former chairperson of the Hong Kong Dance Alliance; the co-founder, with 14 other partners around the region, of the Asia Network for Dance; a member of the council of China’s Dancers’ Association; and an arts advisor to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

She has said that one of her main priorities as the HKAPA’s leader is for the organisation to engage more with the community, fuelling interest in the arts.