Unlock Dancing Plaza (Hong Kong), Namstrops (Japan), SunFool (Hong Kong)
Ong Yong Lock
SunFool
Ōno Genki
Kabashima Yuko
Professor Takahashi Rumiko
Nobe Sōhei, Toyofuku Akifumi, Kodama Takafumi, James Yau, Andy Lee, Kerry Cheung
2019
65 minutes
About the performance
An out-of-this world Olympiad to personal transcendence
The Olympic Games are coming! A passionate amateur is training hard to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Games, alongside elite Japanese athletes. Day and night, the squad challenges members to achieve harder and harder feats that push forward the limits of their endurance, agility, and mental fitness. As they pump in oxygen and pump out perspiration, they also start to distill the vital essence of sport, being both “in the moment” and connected to eternity. Members of Unlock Dancing Plaza are renowned for their exploratory mix of creativity, fun, and self-awareness. Here, the contemporary dance company joins up with the amazingly athletic performers from Namstrops, a Japanese group with a special focus on kinetic energy, and SunFool, who designs the show’s striking pop-up paper artworks. Teaming their individual talents in this vibrantly energetic production, the artists stirringly connect sporting endeavor to goal-setting and self-fulfillment for young audiences.
Unlock Dancing Plaza
Company is a promising contemporary dance company founded in 2002, with Ong Yong Lock as Artistic Director and Joseph Lee as Associate Artistic Director (Joined in 2020). Unlock is committed to pursuing innovative breakthrough and theatrical liberation. These commitments are embodied in and practised through its productions. The company focuses in reflecting dance on the basis of individual. Through defining dance in the uniqueness of a body and being free from the institutionalised aesthetics of dance, Unlock deeply believes, “Everyone can dance”. Curating cross-media, cross-regional, and experimental projects, Unlock Body Lab is developed to discover and show the possibilities of dance in various forms. #DANCELESS includes a series of creative works, performances and workshops that are based on public participatory as the main way of artistic practise. It promotes and deepens the diversify imagination of dance; facilitate the mutual exchange between artists and the public through experiencing dance together. The company is financially supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council since 2009.
Namstrops
The dance unit Namstrops, who come from Miyazaki, founded in 2006 and has been active at home and abroad. Namstrops, the reverse spelling of “sportsman”, implies their athlete background. They studied and created a unique dance program called Creative Dance for 10 years which has been developed in school physical education in Japan. In Contemporary Dance, Creative Dance is classified as Contemporary Artistic Physical Education. Namstrops is a leading organization in Creative Dance; they attempt to display a concept of Physical Education in art spaces by introducing their thought of developing body. They have performed worldwide such as South Korea, China, the UK, Estonia and Romania and were selected the finalists in the Yokohama Dance Collection Ex in 2008, 2011 and 2012. Besides, they run a non-profit organization, Miyazaki C-Dance Center, in collaboration with Professor Takahashi Rumiko from University of Miyazaki to facilitate the development of dance education.
Lau Ming Hang (SunFool)
Also known as “SunFool”, Lau is a lighting design and a pop-up paper arts designer. He has directed and created several works of pop-up theatre, including The Fire Kid, Am I Crying, Ordinary Living and Mr. HALF Dwells… Lau has received multiple nominations for Best Lighting Design at the Hong Kong Drama Awards, and he has designed lighting for many Hong Kong and Overseas performance groups, including Unlock Dancing Plaza, Theatre du Pif, On and On Theatre Workshop, Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, Approaching Theatre (Taiwan), Step Out (Macau) and The Theatre Practice (Singapore).
Ong Yong Lock
He was born in Malaysia, joined the Hong Kong Dance Company in 1989, then joined the City Contemporary Dance Company in 1993. He has toured with the company to perform in various places such as the Mainland, Taiwan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Korea, Japan, France and Israel, etc. Ong was a founding member of South ‘ASLI’ Dance Workshop (SADW). In 1997, he became the Artistic Director of SADW (1997–2001). In 1998, Ong joined the Expressions Dance Company in Brisbane, Australia to perform in the Brisbane Festival 1998. In the same year, he was invited to teach modern dance in Japan and Malaysia as well as choreographed for the 19th Chinese Dance Festival in Malaysia. In 2000, Ong was invited to perform in the East Dragon Dance Festival and World Dance in Japan. He was awarded the Hong Kong Dance Awards 2002 for his choreography of ballet 4 In for The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and was appointed as arts advisor of dance by Hong Kong Arts Development Council in the same year. He received the Award for Best Artist (Dance) at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2014. In 2002, Ong founded the Unlock Dancing Plaza with Elsie Chau to promote and popularize modern dance. His choreographic talents also spoke for itself in the productions which were shown in Asian Art Festival, International Sino Dance Week, Malaysian Chinese Dance Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Hong Kong Dance Festival and 20th International Academy of Dance Festival. Wanderer received the 2015 Hong Kong Dance Awards Outstanding Achievement in Independent Production.
