Snow Fox
Posted:
19 Jan 2010
Cultural Centre, Grand Theatre Friday 22-Sunday 24
Traditional Chinese dance meets martial arts meets modern dance in Hong Kong Dance Company’s upcoming production of Snow Fox. With the wuxia dance drama, artistic director Leung Kwok-shing is seeking to establish a new genre of dance drama that is unique to Hong Kong. “A newspaper once called me the father of martial arts dance drama,” he recalls.
The plot, loosely based on influential martial arts novelist Louis Cha’s Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain, is set in the Qing Dynasty. When Miao Renfeng and Hu Yidao, members of two feuding families, become best friends it leads to a quest, a bitter betrayal and a larger-than-life face-off between good and evil. Cha’s story endeavours to establish an equally powerful myth of Jianghu, a romanticised world that is governed primarily by noble ideals rather than conventional mores.
In view of dance’s and martial arts’ common emphasis on choreography, Leung deems the two to be a perfect match. “Although the dance doesn’t provide breathtaking scenes in which performers seemingly run up walls and glide from rooftop to rooftop,” says Leung, “it is a more poetic and aesthetic form of kung fu. It works better in portraying the romance rather than the violence.”
Teracy Wang
Tickets: 2734 9009; www.urbtix.hk.
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