The biennial City Contemporary Dance Festival (CCDF), initiated by the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) in 2017, is set to open this weekend at the East Kowloon Cultural Centre. Running under the thematic exploration of the “illusion of time,” this year’s program brings together 18 original dance productions, ranging from established international revivals to cutting-edge regional showcases.
The festival’s curation balances historical weight with contemporary innovation. Among the major headliners featured at the event are French master choreographer Maguy Marin’s existentialist masterpiece May B
—a staging of a 1980s work exploring the absurd—and Armin Hokmi’s Shiraz
, which reconstructs a defunct avant-garde artistic community. The festival will also stage Kylián and Sang Jijia
as its grand finale.
East Kowloon Cultural Centre Hosts Regional Showcases
Beyond its European retrospectives, the festival features the three-day “HOTPOT East Asia Dance Platform,” presenting five distinct programs comprising 14 imaginative original works originating from mainland China, Japan, and South Korea.
The Chinese segment highlights emerging choreographers from the Greater Bay Area alongside mainland talents, rolling out three separate programs encompassing six brand-new works that emphasize bold physical exploration and cross-media experimentation. Meanwhile, the Japanese segment spotlights choreographer Chieko Tsukahara alongside Yokohama Dance Collection laureate and Kyoto Choreography Award winner Ayane Nakagawa, offering contrasting aesthetic viewpoints in contemporary choreography. The Korean segment rounds out the platform with four avant-garde pieces illustrating how traditional Korean culture is being dynamically translated into modern idioms.
Curating Time and Memory in Contemporary Performance
Reflecting on the artistic direction of the festival, Sang Jijia explained the deliberate choice to pair works across different generations to foster a cross-temporal dialogue.
Time cannot stand still; time is always flowing. What is the thing that we can imagine has remained?
Sang said, pointing to the enduring stage presence of Marin’s 1980s piece. From my perspective, the ‘illusion of time’ is that we don’t know when something seemingly drops into our memory, and that image points back to that era or moment. ‘I once discovered this person [creator] at the City Contemporary Dance Festival 2026’—this is what we want to leave behind.
This forward-looking curation also serves as a strategic runway for the company itself as it approaches a major historical milestone. The troupe is actively planning its upcoming anniversary.
Looking Ahead to the CCDC 50th Anniversary
The festival serves as an internal mirror for the CCDC as leadership evaluates its institutional footprint. Sang noted that the current programming prepares the ground for how the company approaches its own history and future trajectory.
This also teaches us how to view our classics, and where we ourselves come from. This is also what I have been imagining since joining the dance company—what do we want to do when the dance company turns 50?
Sang stated. The year 2029 marks the 50th anniversary of CCDC. Having walked through so many years, what have we done? And what have we left behind? We might need to start remaking some classics, and in this process, slowly let our young dancers also know the path CCDC has traveled.
As part of this ongoing archival transmission, the company has recently taken young dancers to tour the CCDC office space, where they browsed historical records and company archives. Concurrently, leadership is engaged in discussions with M+ regarding potential future collaborative frameworks as the institution shapes its next chapter.
