One of Hong Kong’s most iconic dancers and choreographers, Mui Cheuk Yin has been at the forefront of dance in Hong Kong for over thirty years. DIARY VI. APPLAUSE…, marking Mui’s 50th anniversary of her age when it premiered in 2009, was met with critical acclaim. Beginning the “Diary” project in 1986 with Diary I. I was born in China…, Mui wanted to craft a journey of dance and theatre that charts her experiences in text and video. Each solo in the series thereafter explored a different chapter of Mui’s own dance history and that of the changing environment in Hong Kong—both political and cultural. Featuring footage made with the late Pina Bausch, DIARY VI. APPLAUSE… is a dance of rare and elegiac beauty.

In Dollhouse, the contemporary dance master and choreographer Bill Coleman portrays a figure whose whole world is literally falling apart all around him. In a room filled with a dizzying clutter of props that collapse and break at his every touch, Coleman shares the stage with the sound artist Gordon Monahan and his unique score. Dollhouse encompasses tap dancing, performance art, sound installation, slapstick, and interactive physical action in which objects deliver disrupting yet riveting rhythms for the ears and eyes. Coleman evokes comic situations towards a mesmerising sonic and visual pandemonium, providing an audiovisual feast for the audience through Monahan’s surreal musical soundscape and landscape. Even if Dollhouse escapes categorisation, it will surely captivate the audience’s imagination with its sheer intensity and innovation.

Winner of 15th Taishin Performing Arts Award (2017), KIDS celebrates the exuberance of life in face of death through highly original body language and theatrical elements. An autobiographical tribute to his late mother, Taiwanese choreographer and dancer Liu Kuan Hsiang’s KIDS is inspired by the many conversations they had during her chemotherapy treatment. Touching on family memories, illusion and reality, and his mother’s impending passing, the conversations—spoken in Taiwanese dialect—were poignant reflections of her life and place in Taiwanese culture and society. KIDS transforms these highly intimate experiences into calm ritualistic movements with twisted, frantic physical extremes—extremes which are as deliriously wild as they are serene or even joyful.