Freespace Dance 2024:
Daniel Yeung – Freespace Dance-exhibitionist

Daniel Yeung has previously performed his Dance / Dan’s Exhibitionist series in 1999 and again in 2011. Now, as he returns to this dance classic for a third time, Freespace Dance conducted the following interview with him.

Question: Can you introduce yourself?

Yeung: People often describe Daniel Yeung as a dancer and choreographer who came into the field unconventionally and largely self-taught. Indeed, I’m quite different from many other dancers in Hong Kong. I didn’t graduate from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), but instead the Department of Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, majoring in Western painting with a minor in Chinese music – fields that might not seem to have much to do with dance. However, it is because of these nourishing influences that my works as a dancer have been quite visual and deeply artistic in orientation, eventually leading me to create cross-media and multimedia productions. Another distinguishing characteristic is that, because I didn’t graduate with a group of people from the same dance academy, I frequently perform solo, and this has led me to create works that revolve around myself as the creator, choreographer and performer all at once. How will I tell my story? How do I use my own unique body to tell it? It sometimes even veers toward narcissism, self-abuse, self-indulgence or even self-destruction, which has become a signature approach of mine in dance circles.

Question: Can you talk about the origin of Dance / Dan’s Exhibitionist series?

Yeung: Even before I formally trained in dance, I was already choreographing and creating works, and received a lot of feedback and praise from critics. By 1996, I had already produced dance pieces for two to three years and started to seriously consider the need for some international and formal training. So, I applied for a scholarship, then went to study choreography and work in the Netherlands. When I returned to Hong Kong in 1999, the Hong Kong Arts Centre was organising a dance festival and invited me to do a solo performance. This invitation gave me the feeling of “Daniel Yeung finally went to learn choreography, received formal training and debuted as a professional”. So I had an ambition to showcase my body – one that had transformed from lacking an academic background to having absorbed some academic techniques. With a background in multimedia, I considered how I could create a small theatre dance piece that allowed multiple Daniel Yeungs to coexist while incorporating multiple media forms. At that time, digital video technology was becoming commonplace, allowing me to film myself at a low cost, creating multiple versions of myselves. I decided to create a dance × video piece, in which the same person would film and choreograph, featuring many interactions between the “two selves” within a small theatre.

With this low-cost technology, I could create a lot of editing effects. Therefore, I did a duet with myself. For example, when two different pieces of music overlapped, a life-sized image of me in the video would dance with myself on stage. The piece created a great response at the time. In addition to its outstanding effects, such works were relatively rare and happened to align with the small theatre and cross-media dance trends of that era, so it came to be seen as a landmark work in cross-media dance of 1999.

Question: Why did you perform it for a second time in 2011?

Yeung: Twelve years later, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department wanted to launch a series to restage classic works and invited me to restage this work. I thought that it would be very difficult to do so, given how much my fitness, physical condition, outlook and creative direction in choreography had evolved over time. So, I said I did not want to re-enact the piece but to redo it. The interesting thing about this piece is that the me in the 1999 video will never change – forever the young, thirty-something Daniel Yeung. However, after 12 years, I was already in my forties. My body was different, as the me on stage had aged. So I used the footage from 12 years ago to stage a reencounter with Daniel Yeung from 12 years ago on stage.

At that time, the venue also changed from a small theatre’s black box theatre to a larger drama theatre at the HKAPA, capable of accommodating over 400 audience members, thus changing the treatment of the video elements. Twelve years on, there were many new possibilities in video technology. I also moved on from filming myself on my own to inviting different media artists to rework the original 1999 footage, using new technology and stage experiences to create a large-scale solo dance performance at a new venue.

I also found this piece fascinating and thought of performing it every 12 years. On the 12th, 24th, 36th and 48th years, I would re-encounter my 1999 self on a new stage, sharing what has happened to me, Hong Kong and the theatre world during the intervening years. Now, 25 years have passed, which is a quarter of a century. I am very grateful to WestK for inviting me to reinterpret this piece, especially with “Re: TIME and SPACE” as the theme, because it is closely related to time. Every 12 years, I meet my former self again in a time tunnel, sparking new possibilities.

Question: What will be different about this third rendition in 2024?

Yeung: This time, the performance is staged in The Box at Freespace, the largest black box theatre in Hong Kong. Typically, black box theatres are known for their flexibility, so the concept of the largest black box is quite intriguing. How do you achieve the flexibility of a small theatre within a large venue? How can you maintain that agility while creating large-scale projection effects? This is a new challenge for me. This piece now not only challenges the theme of “time” but also “space” once it enters a new space, making it a perfect fit for the theme of this year’s dance festival: the reinterpretation of time and space.

This time, besides using many new technologies, I am also working with a new team, making this rendition a brand new version filled with today’s technologies and perspectives on time and space. The team includes both old and new faces. The “old faces” are excellent artists I know very well in Hong Kong, with whom I have had in-depth exchanges. The “new faces” are young artists from Taiwan. After all, we are now in a world 25 years on, so it’s crucial to collaborate with younger artists – some are even under 30. There will also be a composer performing live, which makes the dance performance particularly exciting because live music brings an incredible energy. This team is a blend of the new generation and long-time collaborators, from Hong Kong and Taiwan, encompassing various age groups, realising a cross-media, cross-generational, cross-regional and cross-disciplinary dance performance.

Question: What experience do you hope to bring to the audience?

Yeung: I think the previous two versions were more focused, like the aforementioned emphasis on the changes in my body and the tension created by time, as well as the presentation of this theme on a small versus a large stage. This time, I’ll leave a bit of suspense – there’s no stage at all. In the spirit of “transformation”, even the stage has been transformed away. So, how does one perform without a stage? Just now I have talked about bringing elements of small theatre into a large theatre setting. What’s special about a small theatre is the captivating power of tiny, subtle changes – any corner can become the stage. This time, many spatial elements will unfold mid-air, so that even without a conventional stage, the performance still happens. There are many stage uses beyond imagination, to the extent that even non-performance areas will become part of the performance area.

Throughout the process, I feel that I am not simply dancing onstage for an audience but allowing them to experience different spaces with multiple visual entry points. The audience’s participation also becomes part of the entire experience – not just listening to the music and watching the movements onstage. As such, this production is not just for those who enjoy watching dance but can be approached from any artistic perspective. Different audience members can find interesting corners in this theatre, discovering new perspectives.

I have always thought that dance is not as concrete as theatre, which uses words and language to narrate a story, character or situation with a clear development. Dance is more abstract, resonating not through knowledge or intellectual understanding, but instead reaching for the audience’s subconscious, making people feel an emotion that is hard to describe in life – one that can be achieved in this kind of atmosphere. This contact with the subconscious is like visiting a psychologist, who asks you to lie down and talk about recent events. You don’t need to narrate logically; it’s more like a state of dreaming. In this performance, the audience seating will allow viewers to watch an aerial performance, experiencing my subconscious world in a semi-reclined, semi-dreamlike state. This kind of experience returns to the direct resonance with the audience’s subconscious, which is characteristic of dance. I believe that this experiment may also be a challenge, one that will bring audiences a new way of experiencing dance.