HKPAX 2024: Meeting In-between Time – City Contemporary Dance Company / The Pokfulam Farm

My second and final event of HKPAX was Meeting In-between Time, a site-specific performance by City Contemporary Dance Company at the Pokfulam Farm.

A Unique Setting

In my last post, I explained a little bit about the fortunate timing that allowed me to experience the inaugural HKPAX (Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo).  My first encounter was Time in a Bottle by Leon Ko, a multisensory blend of music, installation and scent.  The following evening I experienced a different sort of multidisciplinary work in the form of Meeting In-between Time. 

Meeting In-between Time is a work by Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC).  It’s one of more than 200 original works created by this internationally recognised company, which was established in 1979 by Dr. Willy Tsao.  It is also a site-specific work.  It takes place at the Pokfulam Farm. 

Let me take a moment to tell you just a little more about Pokfulam Village and its farm, because it’s very interesting.  It starts in the early 19^th century (or earlier if you ask Wikipedia), a bit before China ceded Hong Kong to Britain, when around 30 families of the Chan, Wong, Lo, and Kom clans from Guangdong Province formed a village on the south side of Hong Kong island.  The 1886 establishment of the Dairy Farm Group at Pokfulam provided work for many local residents.  Dairy Farm still exists today as DFI/Dairy Farm Retain Group, but no longer in Pokfulam.  Various historic buildings remain, however, including the Pokfulam Farm which consists of the former Senior Staff Quarters. 

Pokfulam Village is the last indigenous village remaining on Hong Kong Island. Residents have fought for recognition and against urban development, gaining World Monuments Fund listing in 2014.  The Pokfulam Farm, which had also been under threat from urban development, opened at about the same time as a historic and cultural hub and local green space.  I’m fairly certain this sort of recognisable and accessible heritage site will help to strengthen the villagers’ campaign for recognition and protection by bringing visitors in and helping them to understand a now unfamiliar type of urban configuration. I hope so, anyway.

Meeting In-between Time

Thanks for bearing with me – now let’s get back to this dance performance.  And please note I use the present tense here because it’s been staged previously at the Pokfulam Farm, and I hope will be staged here again. Meeting In-between Time takes place in and around the Pokfulam Farm’s historic buildings.  It integrates dance, projected visuals and installations to evoke a sense of place in the past and present. 

The performance consists of four acts.  Firstly, two male dancers move together through a courtyard space, intertwined and supporting one another.  The dancers, bolstered by more of the company, then move into a temporary structure combining screens and windows to give a disjointed and slightly jarring view of the movement within.  Despite their proximity the dancers seem separated, lost in their own thoughts or memories.  The third act sees the company move back outdoors, making use of an elevated walkway surrounded by trees and greenery.  And in the fourth act the audience is seated in front of one of the historic buildings as dancers can be seen at the windows or projected onto the walls in a live video feed.

Meeting In-between Time is a great example of site-specific dance.  The promenade format makes full use of the location, and provides different environments for the dancers to work against.  The different acts each bring their own energy, but the feeling of being suspended in time is consistent throughout.  I enjoyed the opportunity to discover this unique location in such an unexpected way.  And the calibre of CCDC makes me want to come back and see more of their work in future.

Although visitors to Hong Kong would have to have the same good luck I did to catch a reprisal of this work, a trip either to see CCDC or to visit the Pokfulam Farm comes highly recommended.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

Meeting In-between Time was on as part of HKPAX (14-18 October 2024)