Eveline Wong
Eveline is a self-motivated, creative, multitask and well-organized administrator with over 15 years of experience in audience relationship and marketing in the arts industry environment. She is now studying the Ph. D. in Dance at Taipei National University of the Arts. She concentrates on observing, primitive data collection, survey analysis of dance ecology and development, audience behavior and also the management and marketing strategy of arts organizations in Hong Kong and China recently.
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Supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Overview is an annual, bilingual collection of research-based essays that discuss significant issues and incidents of the Hong Kong dance.
Foreword
The Editorial Team regards the ‘Hong Kong Dance Overview Project’ as one to, predominantly with focused essays, explore and study the different aspects of Hong Kong’s dance. Departing from problematics and objectives, thorough analyses are conducted from diversified perspectives, namely philosophical, sociological, and cultural studies, among others. Compared to other parts of Asia, Taiwan and Malaysia for example, where there are academic institutes to focus on dance research, one must confront the scant research and discussion on Hong Kong’s dance, and even performing arts. Many practitioners would agree that, in the face of increasing dance productions, there is not a proper subsidy system to support scrupulous studies that respond to the dance in this city. We cannot simply rely on the effort of scholars and critics. Hence the positioning of the Overview as ‘a research-based publication with the potential to be recognised as an academic one’, with a view to instigating the respect for depth among the funding bodies, the practitioners, and the public. Published bi-lingually, the Overview enhances accessibility of Hong Kong’s dance information to worldwide performing art researchers who work in English. As more and more essays are accumulated over years, we hope that the Overview will be regarded with seriousness, and regularly subsidized, by those who are concerned with Hong Kong’s dance. Dance research, after all, should not be expendable to the performing arts.
The Overview studies incidents and phenomenon of the year which are telling of the various aspects of the dance scene. The value of dance as the critical component of Hong Kong’s performing arts, its impact on the society, structural problems and of the subsidy system, and development potential are evaluated from the perspectives of formal characteristics, curation, marketing, and art criticism. Certain administrative reasons render the publication of the Overview 2017 only in the 3rd quarter of 2020. However, speed is not a qualifier of depth. The distance of time is a perspective. Since the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and its 10 strategic partners, presented ‘Hong Kong Dance Festival 2010’, Hong Kong has seen some small-scale festivals but they have not successfully triggered the dance sector’s interest to dig deep into the notion of ‘festival’. To regard ‘dance festival’ as an operation practice conducted all over the world, one can categorise the actual events into, 1. Annual carnivals of the ‘cultural city’, aiming to attract residents in local and nearby areas and to generate income directly from box office and indirectly from tourism, catering, and shopping; 2. Business operations of the dance sector to bolster the circulation of cultural capital, with overseas programme buyers as the focused audience group; 3. Conscious deployment of ‘festival’ as the means to encourage probe into specific topics or the art form. It goes without saying that the above categorisation is hardly exhaustive. How has ‘City Contemporary Dance Festival’ in 2017 (and ‘Hong Kong Dance Exchange’ and ‘Tai Kwun Dance Season’ that immediately followed in 2018) give shape to the imagination of dance festivals of the future? Two essays on CCDF discuss the glocalisation of dance festivals, and their collaboration with art criticism. In ‘After the Festival--Insights for Hong Kong’s Dance Sector from the 1st City Contemporary Dance Festival (CCDF)’, Eveline Wong studies the positioning and value of dance festivals from a glocalisation perspective. Bernice Chan reviews the role and limitation of performing arts criticism at festivals in ‘The Considerations of Organisers of Art Criticism Events: On the “City Contemporary Dance Festival Chatbox Forum 2017”’.
To perform dance in unconventional performance space poses challenges to the choreographers’ and dancers’ minds and bodies. In recent years, there have been increasing collaborations between dance and the visual arts, expanding the room for dance-making. The coalescence of the performing and visual arts is becoming a tangible aspiration. Is there a way for their similarities and differences to dialogue so that each can benefit from the other and contribute to Hong Kong’s art development? Lee Hoi-yin Joanna gives an account of the encounter and dynamics of dance and visual arts, and its impacts on the dance-makers’ ideas and performance, in ‘What is the “x” When We Talk about "Visual Arts x Dance”?’. Collaboration can be driven out of the need for resources. In a neo-liberal economy such as Hong Kong, for performing art groups to be self-sufficient enterprises is arduous, to put it lightly. Corporate investors’ idea of ‘return-on-investment’ on the performing arts is a colossal barricade. Are these reasons for the performing arts to rely heavily on public funding? Damian Cheng argues how Hong Kong performing art groups will (not) pursue cultural industries strategies in ‘The Hong Kong Ballet’s Way to Cultural Industries?’.
Arguably there are a lot more happening in Hong Kong’s dance than what can be discussed in four essays. Albeit the limitation of availability of writers of dance, when compared to those of other art forms, we are aware of the long way to go before we reach the standard of academic writing, both in terms length and depth. Within the parameters of resources available to the Overview, we strive for the best magnitude and depth possible.
Financially supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and published by Felixism Creation, Hong Kong Dance Overview 2017 is conceived and edited by Lee Hoi-yin Joanna, Wong Chung-yu Eveline, and Chan Wai-ki Felix. We are grateful to the writers, interviewees and other parties who have supported its publication. The Overview 2017 is available for viewing and download on this website. Hong Kong Dance Overview 2018 will be available by the 1st quarter of 2021. The scope of this website goes beyond public funding requirement and is dedicated to the research of dance in Hong Kong. On the foundation of the Overview, it hosts information of other projects curated by the same team, undertakings of the Resident Researchers, reference depository, among others. ‘Hong Kong Dance Research’ aims to nurture dialectical discourse through diversified mode of participation. Your comments and support are going to mean a lot to us.
Papers by Eveline Wong
Supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Overview is an annual, bilingual collection of research-based essays that discuss significant issues and incidents of the Hong Kong dance.
Chan Wai-ki Felix
1. Tai Kwun Dance Season — The Possibilities of People’s Space
Tai Kwun, the new heritage, visual arts and theatre venue in Hong Kong, opened in 2018 and presented the first 'Tai Kwan Dance Season’. As a new dance-themed festival in Hong Kong, it focused on presenting the local dance artists. The Tai Kwun team was willing to plan with artists in a long-term cooperation. The caring attitude for the artists may be an unusual process in the field of Hong Kong performing arts. What excitements and reflections would Tai Kwun instill in Hong Kong's dance scene? Will the curation of dance performances and festivals show new directions with the entrance of Tai Kwun?
Lee Hoi-yin Joanna
2. Performing Arts: The ‘Good’ of Going International
The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, in recent years, have been actively promoting the international visibility of Hong Kong's arts. In 2018, these institutions have separately or collaboratively orgainsed three groups of practitioners to represent Hong Kong in Classical:Next in the Netherlands, tanzmesse in Germany and CINARS in Canada. 'Going international' has always been projected positively by the institutions while practitioners respond the same, rejoicing 'international' as a synonym of artistic achievement. Being in the groups to tanzmesse and CINARS, the writer investigates the legibility of 'going international' as a narrative, and the possible reading of 'Hong Kong' as a signifier in the context of 'international'.
Dong Xianliang
3. The Value of Historical Materials and Criticism on the Archival Process: ‘Research Project — Oral History of Hong Kong Dance Development’
'Research Project—Oral History of Hong Kong Dance Development’ conceived by the City Contemporary Dance Company was completed in 2018. The Unspoken Dance: An Oral History of Hong Kong Dance (1950s-70s) was published in the following year. A website was also built to present the Project’s outcome which includes 'recording of interviews’. Historical writing regards 'oral history’ as structural discourse developed out of the dynamic communication between the interviewer and the narrator and is therefore considered a re-arrangement of the latter’s memories with the induction of the former. Joanna Lee and Venus Lam, the researchers of the Project, proposed the ‘pre-professionalisation’ historical-narrative framework for the interviews with the ten ex-practitioners of Hong Kong’s dance. However, there are specificities in the memory structure of the narrators. Under the premise of acknowledging ‘oral history’ as ‘archive’ and ‘historical materials’, this essay compares the similarities and differences of the historical narrative in The Unspoken Dance and the ‘recording of interviews’ and unearths the tension between the interview intention and orally-accounted memories.
Wong Chung-yu Eveline
4. The Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Dance and Cantonese Opera: A Case Study of Hong Kong Dance Company’s Waiting Heart
The notion of ‘interdisciplinary’ entails the crossing of boundaries.
Interdisciplinary performing arts is no longer new to Hong Kong and has been evolving as technology develops rapidly. Besides breaking through boundaries and seeking innovation, what are the drivers for making interdisciplinary performances? In 2018, the Hong Kong Dance Company and Utopia Cantonese Opera Workshop co-produced Waiting Heart and positioned it as a dance theatre and minimal Canto-opera. The production created much noise. Chances are interdisciplinary performance attracts new audience on top of the regulars, enabling it to tap into new ‘markets’. How can interdisciplinary performances effectively learn about, build, and educate the audience, so that they gain additional meaning and achieve a win-win situation? This is indeed a topic for the performing arts team to further contemplate, explore and plan.
Supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Overview is an annual, bilingual collection of research-based essays that discuss significant issues and incidents of the Hong Kong dance.
Foreword
The Editorial Team regards the ‘Hong Kong Dance Overview Project’ as one to, predominantly with focused essays, explore and study the different aspects of Hong Kong’s dance. Departing from problematics and objectives, thorough analyses are conducted from diversified perspectives, namely philosophical, sociological, and cultural studies, among others. Compared to other parts of Asia, Taiwan and Malaysia for example, where there are academic institutes to focus on dance research, one must confront the scant research and discussion on Hong Kong’s dance, and even performing arts. Many practitioners would agree that, in the face of increasing dance productions, there is not a proper subsidy system to support scrupulous studies that respond to the dance in this city. We cannot simply rely on the effort of scholars and critics. Hence the positioning of the Overview as ‘a research-based publication with the potential to be recognised as an academic one’, with a view to instigating the respect for depth among the funding bodies, the practitioners, and the public. Published bi-lingually, the Overview enhances accessibility of Hong Kong’s dance information to worldwide performing art researchers who work in English. As more and more essays are accumulated over years, we hope that the Overview will be regarded with seriousness, and regularly subsidized, by those who are concerned with Hong Kong’s dance. Dance research, after all, should not be expendable to the performing arts.
The Overview studies incidents and phenomenon of the year which are telling of the various aspects of the dance scene. The value of dance as the critical component of Hong Kong’s performing arts, its impact on the society, structural problems and of the subsidy system, and development potential are evaluated from the perspectives of formal characteristics, curation, marketing, and art criticism. Certain administrative reasons render the publication of the Overview 2017 only in the 3rd quarter of 2020. However, speed is not a qualifier of depth. The distance of time is a perspective. Since the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and its 10 strategic partners, presented ‘Hong Kong Dance Festival 2010’, Hong Kong has seen some small-scale festivals but they have not successfully triggered the dance sector’s interest to dig deep into the notion of ‘festival’. To regard ‘dance festival’ as an operation practice conducted all over the world, one can categorise the actual events into, 1. Annual carnivals of the ‘cultural city’, aiming to attract residents in local and nearby areas and to generate income directly from box office and indirectly from tourism, catering, and shopping; 2. Business operations of the dance sector to bolster the circulation of cultural capital, with overseas programme buyers as the focused audience group; 3. Conscious deployment of ‘festival’ as the means to encourage probe into specific topics or the art form. It goes without saying that the above categorisation is hardly exhaustive. How has ‘City Contemporary Dance Festival’ in 2017 (and ‘Hong Kong Dance Exchange’ and ‘Tai Kwun Dance Season’ that immediately followed in 2018) give shape to the imagination of dance festivals of the future? Two essays on CCDF discuss the glocalisation of dance festivals, and their collaboration with art criticism. In ‘After the Festival--Insights for Hong Kong’s Dance Sector from the 1st City Contemporary Dance Festival (CCDF)’, Eveline Wong studies the positioning and value of dance festivals from a glocalisation perspective. Bernice Chan reviews the role and limitation of performing arts criticism at festivals in ‘The Considerations of Organisers of Art Criticism Events: On the “City Contemporary Dance Festival Chatbox Forum 2017”’.
To perform dance in unconventional performance space poses challenges to the choreographers’ and dancers’ minds and bodies. In recent years, there have been increasing collaborations between dance and the visual arts, expanding the room for dance-making. The coalescence of the performing and visual arts is becoming a tangible aspiration. Is there a way for their similarities and differences to dialogue so that each can benefit from the other and contribute to Hong Kong’s art development? Lee Hoi-yin Joanna gives an account of the encounter and dynamics of dance and visual arts, and its impacts on the dance-makers’ ideas and performance, in ‘What is the “x” When We Talk about "Visual Arts x Dance”?’. Collaboration can be driven out of the need for resources. In a neo-liberal economy such as Hong Kong, for performing art groups to be self-sufficient enterprises is arduous, to put it lightly. Corporate investors’ idea of ‘return-on-investment’ on the performing arts is a colossal barricade. Are these reasons for the performing arts to rely heavily on public funding? Damian Cheng argues how Hong Kong performing art groups will (not) pursue cultural industries strategies in ‘The Hong Kong Ballet’s Way to Cultural Industries?’.
Arguably there are a lot more happening in Hong Kong’s dance than what can be discussed in four essays. Albeit the limitation of availability of writers of dance, when compared to those of other art forms, we are aware of the long way to go before we reach the standard of academic writing, both in terms length and depth. Within the parameters of resources available to the Overview, we strive for the best magnitude and depth possible.
Financially supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and published by Felixism Creation, Hong Kong Dance Overview 2017 is conceived and edited by Lee Hoi-yin Joanna, Wong Chung-yu Eveline, and Chan Wai-ki Felix. We are grateful to the writers, interviewees and other parties who have supported its publication. The Overview 2017 is available for viewing and download on this website. Hong Kong Dance Overview 2018 will be available by the 1st quarter of 2021. The scope of this website goes beyond public funding requirement and is dedicated to the research of dance in Hong Kong. On the foundation of the Overview, it hosts information of other projects curated by the same team, undertakings of the Resident Researchers, reference depository, among others. ‘Hong Kong Dance Research’ aims to nurture dialectical discourse through diversified mode of participation. Your comments and support are going to mean a lot to us.
Supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Overview is an annual, bilingual collection of research-based essays that discuss significant issues and incidents of the Hong Kong dance.
Chan Wai-ki Felix
1. Tai Kwun Dance Season — The Possibilities of People’s Space
Tai Kwun, the new heritage, visual arts and theatre venue in Hong Kong, opened in 2018 and presented the first 'Tai Kwan Dance Season’. As a new dance-themed festival in Hong Kong, it focused on presenting the local dance artists. The Tai Kwun team was willing to plan with artists in a long-term cooperation. The caring attitude for the artists may be an unusual process in the field of Hong Kong performing arts. What excitements and reflections would Tai Kwun instill in Hong Kong's dance scene? Will the curation of dance performances and festivals show new directions with the entrance of Tai Kwun?
Lee Hoi-yin Joanna
2. Performing Arts: The ‘Good’ of Going International
The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, in recent years, have been actively promoting the international visibility of Hong Kong's arts. In 2018, these institutions have separately or collaboratively orgainsed three groups of practitioners to represent Hong Kong in Classical:Next in the Netherlands, tanzmesse in Germany and CINARS in Canada. 'Going international' has always been projected positively by the institutions while practitioners respond the same, rejoicing 'international' as a synonym of artistic achievement. Being in the groups to tanzmesse and CINARS, the writer investigates the legibility of 'going international' as a narrative, and the possible reading of 'Hong Kong' as a signifier in the context of 'international'.
Dong Xianliang
3. The Value of Historical Materials and Criticism on the Archival Process: ‘Research Project — Oral History of Hong Kong Dance Development’
'Research Project—Oral History of Hong Kong Dance Development’ conceived by the City Contemporary Dance Company was completed in 2018. The Unspoken Dance: An Oral History of Hong Kong Dance (1950s-70s) was published in the following year. A website was also built to present the Project’s outcome which includes 'recording of interviews’. Historical writing regards 'oral history’ as structural discourse developed out of the dynamic communication between the interviewer and the narrator and is therefore considered a re-arrangement of the latter’s memories with the induction of the former. Joanna Lee and Venus Lam, the researchers of the Project, proposed the ‘pre-professionalisation’ historical-narrative framework for the interviews with the ten ex-practitioners of Hong Kong’s dance. However, there are specificities in the memory structure of the narrators. Under the premise of acknowledging ‘oral history’ as ‘archive’ and ‘historical materials’, this essay compares the similarities and differences of the historical narrative in The Unspoken Dance and the ‘recording of interviews’ and unearths the tension between the interview intention and orally-accounted memories.
Wong Chung-yu Eveline
4. The Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Dance and Cantonese Opera: A Case Study of Hong Kong Dance Company’s Waiting Heart
The notion of ‘interdisciplinary’ entails the crossing of boundaries.
Interdisciplinary performing arts is no longer new to Hong Kong and has been evolving as technology develops rapidly. Besides breaking through boundaries and seeking innovation, what are the drivers for making interdisciplinary performances? In 2018, the Hong Kong Dance Company and Utopia Cantonese Opera Workshop co-produced Waiting Heart and positioned it as a dance theatre and minimal Canto-opera. The production created much noise. Chances are interdisciplinary performance attracts new audience on top of the regulars, enabling it to tap into new ‘markets’. How can interdisciplinary performances effectively learn about, build, and educate the audience, so that they gain additional meaning and achieve a win-win situation? This is indeed a topic for the performing arts team to further contemplate, explore and plan.