The City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) — a Hong Kong institution known for its avant-garde approach to developing the language of dance since 1979 — hosted its biennial festival from Oct 23 through 31 at the East Kowloon Cultural Centre. Highlights included legendary Czech choreographer Jirí Kylián’s milestone piece Sleepless, and CCDC Artistic Director Sang Jijia’s newest work, a/ch. The first is an abstract classic of movement, evocative of the restless mind, while the latter is an exploration of the endless transitions between the real and the virtual realms.

For CCDC, the year started with Two Matters in May, Like Summer Flowers in August, and will wrap with Dance Matrix in January. The last one revisits “handpicked seminal repertory works from our archive,” says Sang.

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“Dance Matrix is not simply a revival of old pieces. It is a living conversation. Our current dancers revisit these signature works, approaching them from their own contemporary perspectives, bridging the company’s past and present. It lets audience members trace how CCDC’s artistic identity has evolved, while keeping the core spirit of those classics alive.”

Sang has over 200 original dance works to choose from, but chances are that the ones that make it to the final cut will work in seamless dialogue with the rest of the 2026-27 season. All of this year’s programs are linked in terms of form and theme. “There is indeed an intentional through-line,” says Sang, explaining a desire to engage audience members through overlapping lenses that open up a range of experiences, “rather than locking them into single, fixed readings”.

Such preoccupation with multiplicity runs across the whole season. Sang argues that the idea is in fact baked into CCDC’s artistic DNA: manifest in the act of bringing multiple perspectives to the stage and encouraging multiple interpretations of a piece.

On the surface, Sleepless and a/ch sit in opposition to each other as old and new; inward looking versus outward looking, but they are thematically and, to a degree, stylistically in sync. Sang’s latest may be among the company’s most acrobatically fluid, building “a whole shifting perceptual field for the audience to move through”. The two pieces address inner life, contrasted with the perceived world.

“Still, the sensibilities differ: Sleepless is tight, restrained, psychologically precise; a/ch works with accumulation, overlay and open‑ended ambiguity. We put them together so the audience can watch one and then see the other as its counterpoint,” Sang says.

It is what you make of it

Festival highlights also include May B and Shiraz. The hope is that audience members consider the ideas of existentialism and stagnant time while watching May B; and that of memory and history during Shiraz.

“Our minds constantly drift: we remember the past, we imagine futures, we slip between waking and dreaming,” says Sang. “Dance is uniquely good at making that inner chaos visible. We are not asking people simply to watch dance pieces about time; we want them to recognize their own lived relationship with time.”

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All four pieces are performed on a sparse stage, with a production design based on clean geometrical forms and monochrome lights, leaving ample room for interpretation. The aim is to encourage audience members to consider dance languages from around the world.

Alluding to the CCDC-curated Hotpot East Asia Dance Platform, Sang says that the biennial showcase based on regional partnership has helped build a shared East Asian dance discourse. Hotpot 2026 presents works from South Korea, Japan and the Chinese mainland alongside Jumping Frames — a festival dedicated to multidisciplinary shows involving live performances and moving images, among others — and a showcase of works by emerging choreographers, the makers who are expected to keep the spirit of innovation alive in the coming years.

The writer is a freelance contributor to China Daily.