Threads of Paradox and Transformation in ‘Concrete Rain Asian Dance Festival’

The festival unfolds as a journey through imagination and memory, expressed physically across architecture, ritual, myth, and personal identity. Despite the vast range in movement vocabularies and aesthetics, the works woven together reveal two motifs: paradox/dichotomy and symbolic transformation. Each work turns to a unique embodied practice and narrative. The arrangement of the pieces, however, perhaps could have been curated for stronger narrative synergy given the thematic richness on display.

I. Symbolic Transformation

Towards A New Architecture: Brutalism – Jiarong Yu The festival’s opener reimagines the city as a living, breathing extension of the dancer’s body. Projections, gradually shifting from linear flares to organic morphologies, embroider the dancers in patterns of architectural growth and dissolution, a metaphor for migrant communities forging solidarity. Movements hint of Asian dance that highlights details in the hands; whilst the persistent hammering hands represents the mortise-tenon structure that originates in China, layered with the body as both tool and structure. The projection of the Barbican emerges as an abstract anchor, and the dancers’ hands and spines build their next destination. This piece exemplifies symbolic transformation, with physicality dissolving into architectural spirit, reflecting the act of “building anew” within each of our own inherited histories.

Image: Towards A New Architecture: Brutalism  | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

Sayonara 再見 – Unboxing Theatre

Sayonara explores the transformation between ritual, emotion, and identity. It poetically abstracts funeral rites and the emotional undertow of parting. Four dancers in black mourning clothes wield wooden branches, at times forming coffins, human figures, or memorial portraits. Absence, marked by a minimal set, becomes vivid through their embodied storytelling; instead, grief is not treated as a narrative closure, but as an open space for acceptance and negotiation. It underscores the sense of collective ritual transmuted by private grief, with moments of group dissolution and duet conflict evoking the messy, inconsistent ways individuals journey through farewell. The ritual is transformed through various movement vocabularies into a poetic meditation on the universality of loss and letting go.

Image: Sayonara 再見  | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

Black Sheep Reversal – Kiwi Chan

Kiwi Chan’s solo navigates the symbolic baggage of family expectation and generational trauma, using a sheep head mask, costume, and the motif of the skeleton as dramaturgical devices. Chan’s “grass mud horse” persona emerges through aggressive, defiant bodily actions on stage: the kimono is shed; the sheep mask is rolled away; and she dances with a skeleton, conjuring matrilineal history and the struggle for individuality. The stage/screen interplay serves a crucial role in such liberation as her gigantic red dress figure fiercely stomping and gouging soil, establishing the ritual of exhumation and self-liberation. The performance viscerally embodies transformation, stripping away roles and expectations, and ends in a confrontation with the self and ancestry: dance as a rite of reclamation.

Image: Black Sheep Reversal  | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

When The Petals Fall – Yan Yin Yung Anchored by mythology but driven by emotions, this ensemble work maps the immigrant’s liminal experience through cycles of loss and community-building. Individual dancers roam, chest-tap and collapse with loud exhaling breaths as lost souls, demonstrating the chaos and isolation of migration. Duos play children’s games and move in unison, while ensembles forge connections via collective movement; the final sequence — a utopian circle of solidarity— marks the blossoming of a new, shared identity in the lyrical music. The lighting’s pink wash symbolizes the delicate, incomplete passage from one life to another, and the enduring hope of eventual belonging. Here, transformation is both personal and collective, a mythic afterlife journey for transient beings.

Image: When The Petals Fall  | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

II. Paradox/Dichotomy

Invisible Chaos – Tomo Sone Sone’s solo threads paradox through body and training: East vs West, fluidity vs staccato, surface calm vs submerged turbulence. The somatic vocabulary borrows from Noh theatre and Western dance, stitched through with moments of tense tiptoe balancing, slow Noh walking, and abrupt leaps. Costume texture, in ruffles versus silk, embodies this contradiction. Sone appears amphibious, hinted by the water soundscape and the bird chirping, echoing amphibian skin and the need to survive between worlds. The choreography demonstrates Sone’s Asian body as an axis trying to find balance and negotiation, and how new vocabularies arise from chaotic transformations.

Image: Invisible Chaos | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

The Great Void – Dove Che This duet offers an extended meditation on duality — unity/separation, form/emptiness, black/white —rooted in Taoist and Buddhist philosophies. The dancers’ nude leotards, gentle mirroring, and animalistic yet controlled movements create a visual yin and yang. The piece begins with the dancers in a kneeling, embryo-like position, their arms rising like a bird extending into space. A sense of weightlessness emerges as they share breathing rhythm and their bodies maintain only minimal points of contact, yet their movements continually morph and evolve. This restrained, contemplative piece transcends narrative to become an experience of paradox: tension and unity, muscular stillness and minimalist flow, the cycle of reincarnation without a clear beginning or end.

Image: The Great Void  | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

Double Edged: Laboratory of Human Friction – Ka Ki Christina Lai & Ying Yen Yvonne Wang

A physical “laboratory” for exploring relational paradox, this work thrives at the intersection of conflict and harmony, improvisation and structure. Two dancers, distinct in energy, enter and take up opposing corners with robotic and machinic vocal in the background, as if they process each other’s existence through digital filters. Their initial mirrored movements suggest observation, learning, and cautious distance. Improvisation as a practice also reflects the bombardment of awe and shock in human interactions. Uncertainty derived from improvisation allows the body to process, adapt, and transform friction into new possibilities. Verbal overlays occasionally distract, as the dynamics of friction and negotiation could well be delivered through movement.

Image: Double Edged: Laboratory of Human Friction | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

CHUM [ˈtʃuːm] – Hahyyun Kim CHUM [ˈtʃuːm]  interrogates the dichotomy between tradition and contemporary expression, using the Korean fan as a boundary and bridge. The dancers’ identical white and red costumes paired with neutral white fans subvert the prop’s traditional vibrancy. Yet the fans continue to serve as an extension of the body, enriching the narrative of the piece. The work therefore, suggests that tradition could be upheld and reimagined — demonstrating how contemporary execution, even when using traditional costumes and props, repeatedly imbues movement with renewed meaning and vitality. Movements that are also initially articulated through the fan are later echoed without it, prompting the audience to reflect on the significance of props in dance – how they shape, or are transcended by, the authenticity of movement and expression from within the performer.

Image: CHUM [ˈtʃuːm]  | Credit: Rachel Gibson-Duff

While introducing each work individually preserves its distinct character, situating them within overarching themes could forge a more resonant festival arc. The juxtaposition of tradition and innovation, loss and renewal, ritual and rebellion invites audiences to see each dance not as an endpoint, but as part of a continuous embodied negotiation. Embracing overarching themes may also encourage audiences to delve deeper into the ongoing transformations within Asian dance, appreciating how these works reflect an ever-evolving conversation between heritage and contemporary expression.