New Moves

Celebrated Tibetan choreographer Sang Jijia, who has been named the new artistic director of City Contemporary Dance Company this year, wants to bring change to the industry in Hong Kong

- Zabrina Lo

The urban jungle of Hong Kong is a far cry from the lush plains and vast mountains of ethnic Tibetan choreographer Sang Jijia’s homeland in Gansu, north-central China. “I come from a herding family. Back in the 1980s, there were no telephones or TVs. We led a simple and innocent life. As children, we used to roam free on the plains with our buttocks exposed,” he recalls with a laugh. “I used to think the world beyond our lands was the same as ours.”

And just as his upbringing contrasts with that of a city kid of his generation, so too does his introduction to dance; there was no dance school for him. “The concept of dance training was foreign to me,” he says. “My people would come together and sing and dance in the mountains at different occasions. We didn’t need to learn how; it runs in our veins.”

Despite this, Sang Jijia—Tibetans have no surnames; this given name means “blessed by the Buddha”— has worked in Hong Kong and Guangdong since 1993, first as a dancer at the Guangdong Modern Dance Company (GMDC) and City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC), then as a choreographer for those companies, as well as for BeijingDance/LDTX and various dance festivals. Last month, he was appointed artistic director for CCDC, which is Hong Kong’s oldest professional contemporary dance group still in existence.

This year, Sang Jijia will invite two choreographers, one from Europe and one from New York, to Hong Kong to create new pieces with CCDC dancers. He will also create an original production—details were yet to be announced at the time of writing in January—and stage the Hong Kong premiere of a piece by his mentor William Forsythe, the famed American contemporary ballet choreographer.