Mui Cheuk-yin—SOLO_Eng Version__53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival
27-29.03.2025 / 8:15pm
30.03.2025 / 3:00pm
Studio Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre
Approximately one hour with no interval
Free seating
Photograph
House Rules
※ Please switch off mobile phones and all electronic devices so they will not emit sound or light during the performance, disturbing the performers and other audience members.
※ Unauthorised photography or recording of any kind is strictly prohibited.
※ Please keep noise to a minimum during the performance.
※ The content of all works is independently produced by the creative team, and does not reflect the views or opinions of the Sponsor.
※ The content of this programme and the opinions featured in this publication are solely those of the artists/guest writers and do not represent the views or opinions of the Hong Kong Arts Festival (“HKAF”).
※ Ticket holders are strongly advised to arrive punctually. The HKAF reserves the right to refuse the (a) admission of latecomers (whether at the beginning of the performance or after the intermission) and (b) re-admission of audience members who leave the auditorium during the performance.
※ The HKAF also reserves the sole discretion to determine the possibility of admission and re-admission of audience members (which includes latecomers and audience members who have left the auditorium and are seeking re-admission), as well as the manner in which they are admitted.
※ In any case, should the HKAF permit the admission of latecomers, such latecomers shall only be admitted at designated latecomer point(s). No refunds or changes will be offered if ticket holders are refused admission due to late arrival. In the event of any dispute, the HKAF reserves all rights to make the final decision.
※ The English versions of the house rules on the HKAF website and front-of-house announcements will prevail in the event of any dispute.
Screening ACC Artists Documentary Film Series— MUI Cheuk Yin—Dance
27-29.03.2025 / 7:30pm 30.03.2025 / 2:15pm, 4:45pm Approximately 30 minutes Lemna of the alchemist
Free admission; registration required
Contents
Chief Executive’s Message
Chairman’s Message
Foreword
About Mui Cheuk-yin
Programme, Original Creative and Production Team
Choreographer’s Note
Interview
Creative and Production Team
Creative and Production Team
Profiles
About the Hong Kong Arts Festival
Committee and Staff List
Acknowledgements
Message
I am pleased to congratulate the Hong Kong Arts Festival on the organisation of its 2025 season—the 53rd edition of one of the world’s most celebrated international cultural events.
This year’s Festival brings together over 1,300 international and local artists in some 125 performances covering music, dance, theatre, Chinese and Western opera and much more. The Festival-opening performance, by Italy’s Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, conducted by Maestro Donato Renzetti, features classic Italian opera arias. Renowned Chinese conductor Lü Jia and the China National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra, together with international pianist Zhang Haochen and soprano Song Yuanming, bring the Festival to a close in grand style.
Festival PLUS returns, presenting a wealth of artist-audience events, including masterclasses and workshops, backstage visits, guided cultural tours and more. Besides, the Festival’s “Young Friends” programme features school tours, pre-performance talks, arts demonstrations and other special events designed to engage local young people with a world of arts and culture.
The Government is determined to enhance the appeal of Hong Kong’s culture. To further solidify Hong Kong’s position as a vibrant Eastmeets-West centre for international cultural exchanges, the Government has launched the Blueprint for Arts and Culture and Creative Industries Development in November 2024, and has been actively working on the 71 measures under four key strategic directions as outlined in the Blueprint.
I am grateful to the Hong Kong Arts Festival and its dedicated team for their unremitting efforts in promoting arts and culture in Hong Kong, throughout the region and around the world. I am grateful, too, to the many sponsors and donors for their generous support for the Festival.
I wish this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival another resplendent season of arts and culture, entertainment and memorable community engagement.
John KC LEE Chief Executive Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Chairman’s Message
A warm welcome to the 53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival. As a leading international performing arts event, the Festival is continuing its mission of enhancing Hong Kong’s cultural landscape by showcasing over 1,300 exceptional international and local artists in more than 125 performances of over 45 unique programmes, as well as organising about 300 PLUS and educational activities for the community.
I would like to thank the HKSAR Government, acting through the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, for its annual subvention and matching grant which are not only essential to our operations, but also an important recognition of the work we do. I also want to thank The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust for its unwavering support during the past 53 years, as well as other corporate sponsors, charitable foundations and donors, whose contributions have enabled us to reach out to different sectors of the community and positively impact society through the performing arts.
My deepest gratitude goes to all participating artists for their dedication and exceptional performances. I also thank all HKAF staff, who worked extremely hard to bring this Festival to life.
Most importantly, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to all audience members for your participation and support. May you find joy and inspiration in our programmes and events.
Lo Kingman Chairman Hong Kong Arts Festival
Supporting Organisation:
Promoting international cultural exchange has always been a key objective of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. This year’s Festival continues to invite renowned global masters and internationally recognised young pioneers to present a range of worldclass programmes, respecting tradition while encouraging new, innovative initiatives. Many of these works are inspired by classic literature or offer rediscoveries of the original, bringing vibrant artistic experiences to the city.
We will also present a series of programmes centred around “fantasy and adventure”. These include works that seamlessly blend the arts with VR and AR technology, as well as captivating new creations that draw on traditional puppetry and circus performances. The Festival will also continue to support local artists and encourage exchanges to foster a vibrant and diversified platform for the arts.
We also remain dedicated to advancing arts education and audience building. Our PLUS programmes will present a series of thoughtfully curated masterclasses, backstage visits, post-performance artist talks and an exhibition. And our Young Friends and educational activities will continue to offer multidimensional arts experiences to students.
We hope that you will enjoy this year’s arts extravaganza prepared by the Hong Kong Arts Festival team.
Flora Yu Executive Director Hong Kong Arts Festival
The Hong Kong Arts Festival is made possible with the funding support of:
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Mui Cheuk-yin trained in Chinese classical and ethnic dance in Hong Kong, serving as the Principal Dancer for the Hong Kong Dance Company from 1981-90. In 1985, she won the Hong Kong Young Choreographer Competition, which led to a scholarship to study modern dance in New York. By the 1990s, she had transitioned into an independent choreographer, dancer and teacher. With support from the Asian Cultural Council, she participated in the International Choreographers’ Programme at the American Dance Festival and performed at the EastWest Center, University of Hawaii. She frequently received commissions from the City Contemporary Dance Company, the Hong Kong Dance Company and The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts to create new works.
As an internationally renowned solo artist and dance ambassador for Hong Kong, Mui’s choreography explores human emotions and relationships. Her work is characterised by a distinctive aesthetic that merges contemporary styles with Chinese elements. Her dedication to excellence has earned her numerous accolades, including five Hong Kong Dance Awards (2000, 2001, 2009, 2013, 2022), the Distinguished Achievement Award (2012) from the Hong Kong Dance Alliance and the Artist of the Year award from The Hong Kong Arts Development Council (2021) for her long-standing contributions to dance in Hong Kong.
Mui’s notable works include Awakening in a Dream, Cursive Script, Fragrant Garden, Water Music, E-motion, As Quick as Silver, Stories about Certain Women, Eulogy, la grace, Between Bow and String, Of Grandeur and Desolation, Kinetic Body Operatics, Pink Lily, October Red, Duet 3X, The Enigma of Desire— Dali vs Gala, Lot˙us, Shui in Feng. Shui, Desperately Seeking Miss Blossom, Season N in Seasonal Syndromes, Love Accidentally, The Tales of Miles in Triptych and Diary VI—Applause....
Mui has been invited to numerous international arts festivals, including the Hong Kong Arts Festival (1994, 2001), Culturgest in Lisbon (1995), the ReOrient Festival in London (1995) and the Biennale Danza in Venice (1999). In 2000, she was invited by Pina Bausch and Folkwang Tanzstudio to choreograph Whispering Colour and perform as a guest dancer in The Rite of Spring with Tanztheater Wuppertal.
Programme, Original Creative and Production Team
As Quick as Silver (Co-commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in 1994)
Set & Costume Designer
Ho Ying-fung
Lighting Designer
Tommy Wong
Awakening in a Dream (Commissioned by the Hong Kong Dance Company in 1986)
Set & Costume Designer
Wong Kam-kwong
Lighting Designer
Wong Chit-ming
Music Source
Xue Xiaoguang (Suzhou pingtan of Longing for the Mundane World)
Eulogy (Commissioned by the City Contemporary Dance Company in 1995)
Costume Designer
William Tang
Lighting Designer
Richard Lee
Music Source
David Darling (“Darkwood I, II and III” from the album Cello)
Choreographer’s Note
In 1985, I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship as the champion of the Chinese Dance category (for Mountain Spirit) in the Hong Kong Youth
Choreography Competition organised by the Urban Council. This allowed me to study modern dance in New York for the first time. Subsequently, I received various exchange grants from the Asian Cultural Council, the US Information Agency and the French Consulate, enabling me to begin the most active period of my studies abroad, transitioning from modern dance to postmodern dance. The three earliest solo dance works I created document this phase of continual impact and reflection, all serving as small achievements in my practice and research.
Text: Mui Cheuk-yin
Contents Interview
Mui Cheuk-yin’s Love Letter to Hong Kong’s Dance History
Kwan Pun-leung
Dancer-choreographer Mui Cheuk-
yin is versatile, to say the least. In her solo piece Awakening in a Dream she is lithe, ethereal and effortlessly graceful, using a paper fan to accentuate her delicate movements; while in Eulogy, she is a warrior and protector in equal measure, much like the umbrella she’s wielding.
Born in Guangzhou and raised in Hong Kong, Mui has spent the past 50 years recording and capturing life on one canvas alone: her body.
Reflecting on the absence of a performing arts database in Hong Kong, she smiles: “I’m like an oral history vending machine—students keep coming to me because they can’t find any archival materials to help with their dissertations.” With no documentation to trace past performances and slim chances for a work to get restaged, it became a major challenge for the dance community to create and preserve the classics.
Carving classics in dance
This is why the re-staging of her three solo pieces, As Quick as Silver Awakening in a Dream and Eulogy at the 53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival is so significant. “For a work to become a ‘classic’ abroad, you have to perform it at least 100 times. But in Hong Kong, it’s hard to even get a rerun for a show. I want to do my part to make classics for this city.”
These three early works carry a lot of meaning for Mui—both personally and professionally. On the invitation of legendary dancer Pina Bausch, she performed two of these pieces for Tanztheater Wuppertal on its 25th anniversary. But more importantly, they represent touchstones in some of the most important stages in her career as a choreographer. Created in 1986, shortly after her studies in New York, Awakening in a Dream marks Mui’s transition from Chinese to modern dance. For Mui, the 1980s were an extraordinary epoch: the modern dance movement was still thriving, and legends such as Martha Graham were still alive and even opening their studios to the public. The study trip had a profound impact on Mui, who was deeply rooted in classical Chinese dance. “Modern dance is all about looking at ourselves from a different perspective, including our dance techniques and our own culture.” Awakening in a Dream resulted from this deep dive and quickly became her signature work. Although based on the eponymous short story by Pai Hsien-yung, the piece abandons narrative structure and instead presents the story from the first-person perspective of the protagonist, Lan Tien-yu, as the retired singer experiences changing times and the passage of youth.
Her second breakthrough came in the 1990s after Mui returned to the United States to study postmodern dance. If modern dance was a reaction against tradition, postmodern dance was a return to the body and its communication with other parties. Two works, As Quick as Silver and Eulogy, were born out of this period. The former, inspired by a simple household item—aluminium foil— explores structured improvisation based on a single material. In the latter piece, Mui literally dances with the wind—using the umbrella both as a sword and a wind-generator, to create an artwork that evokes the exquisite beauty of Li Qingzhao’s poetry.
Much like Mui herself, her movements are informed by a defiant yet composed spirit that courses through her works, from Chinese dance to modern and postmodern dance. Over the past five decades, she has stood proud amid the vicissitudes of the world, creating dances that have become cultural treasures of Hong Kong.
With a career that has spanned 50 years and counting, Mui has her own philosophy about ageing. “I believe there is a different kind of beauty to every stage of life. The power to move the audience, in the end, is not about the precision of your movements, but whether there is life in it. And the source of this life has something to do with age.” She remembers being questioned by poet Leung Ping-kwan when she first performed Awakening in a Dream: how could a young woman in her twenties understand the twilight sorrow of the ageing songstress, Lan Tien-yu? And she found the “real” Lan Tien-yu, so the story goes, when she danced the piece again in her fifties.
“I hope that I can still dance Lan Tienyu when I’m 90—I’m sure it will be even better!”
Text: Shao yi Chan
This article was originally published on the HKAF’s News & Features website in January 2025
Creative and Production Team
Choreographer & Performer
Mui Cheuk-yin
Lighting & Set Designer
Lee Chi-wai
Sound Designer
Candog Ha
Composer & Music Designer
(As Quick as Sliver)
Steve Hui
Assistant Sound Designer
Yip Wai-shan
Producer
Kevin Wong
Production Manager
Agnes Lee
Deputy Stage Manager
Ho Tak-ching
Chief Electrician
Lee Tin-lap
Lighting Operator
Edwin Tam
Set Production
Art Domain Advertising & Decoration Ltd
Assistant Stage Manager
Alex Tsai
Wardrobe Mistress
Linda Lee
Make-up
Priscilla Choi Spectrum
Stage Assistants
Ricky Chan
Chim Man-lung
Sun Kwok-wah
Lighting Designer Lee Chi-wai
Lee Chi-wai is a lighting designer from Hong Kong. He believes creation forms the basis of the most sincere connections between people, and aims to use light and space to add language to his dance pieces. Lee’s recent works include Chou Shu-yi’s 1875 Ravel and Bolero (2024), Mui Cheuk-yin’s Double Happiness: The Promise of Red and Kingsley Ng’s
Esmeralda
Sound Designer
Candog Ha
Candog Ha graduated from the Theatre, Sound and Music Recording Department of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She has worked as a sound designer, engineer and audio consultant in local and international drama, dance, concert, musical and multimedia productions.
Ha has won the award for Best Sound Design at the Hong Kong Drama Awards four times for The Impossible Trial Women in Kenzo Sing Out and Our Immortal Cantata (re-run).
Her recent works include I Am What I Am The Musical (Cantonese version), Garden of Repose—a Multimedia Choral Concert and the Yat-sen Musical for the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Matteo Ricci for The Musical Intercultural Dialogue, The Impossible Trial for WestK and the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre (preview, first run and re-run), among others.
Composer & Music Designer (As Quick as Sliver)
Steve Hui
Steve Hui is a multidisciplinary artist trained in contemporary Classical composition and rooted in the rave scene. He hacks into the existing music system by mixing various art forms, crossing boundaries and experimenting with traditions. His practice transcends the boundaries between music, sound, theatre and underground culture. He is a co-organiser of experimental art organisation Twenty Alpha, a lecturer at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, a programme host on Hong Kong Community Radio and a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council New York Fellowship. He has performed at festivals such as CTM in Berlin, Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival in Lausanne, Playfreely in Singapore and Sónar Hong Kong.
Producer Kevin Wong
Kelvin Wong graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor’s degree in Business. He joined the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) in 1995 as a Publicity Officer and freelanced in various independent dance productions. From 2000-08, he was the Company Manager of DanceArt Hong Kong and Senior Marketing Manager of Theatre Ensemble/PIP Cultural Industry.
In 2008, Wong became the Senior Programme Manager of the CCDC Dance Centre and later its Director. He served as Vice-Chairperson of the Hong Kong Dance Alliance and Arts Advisor (Dance) at the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Committed to sustainable development in the local dance industry, Wong received the Distinguished Achievement Award at the 25th Hong Kong Dance Awards in 2024.
About the Hong Kong Arts Festival
Launched in 1973, the Hong Kong Arts Festival is a major international arts festival committed to enriching the cultural life of the city. In February and March every year, the Festival presents leading local and international artists in all genres of the performing arts, placing equal importance on great traditions and contemporary creations. The Festival also commissions and produces work in Cantonese opera, theatre, music, chamber opera and contemporary dance by Hong Kong’s creative talent and emerging artists; many of these works have had successful subsequent runs in Hong Kong and overseas. The Festival also presents “PLUS” and educational activities that bring a diverse range of arts experiences to the community as well as tertiary, secondary and primary school students. In addition, through the “No Limits” project co-presented with The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the Festival strives to create an inclusive space for people with different abilities to share the joys of the arts together.
The HKAF is a non-profit organisation. The total estimated income for FY2024/25 (including the 53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival and 2025 “No Limits”) is approximately HK$150 million. Current Government annual baseline funding accounts for around 12% of the Festival's total income. Around 23% of the Festival’s income needs to come from the box office, and around 45% from sponsorship and donations made by corporations, individuals and charitable foundations. The remaining 20% is expected to come from other revenue sources including the Government’s matching grant scheme, which matches income generated through private sector sponsorship and donations.
Technical Coordinators Jess Cheung*, Yan Fan*, Lawrence Lee*, Pang Ka-tat*, Joyi Tsang*
*Contract Staff In alphabetical order # 2023/24 and 2024/25 The Arts Talents Internship Matching Programme is supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Updated February 2025
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