Interviewer and Text: Natasha Rogai *This interview was originally conducted in Russian and translated into English. “From my earliest childhood, I knew it was my destiny to become a ballerina.” Elizaveta Kokoreva says, “I never even thought of there being any other path because I always loved to dance.” The Moscow-born 25-year-old made headlines in the ballet world in 2023 when she became the Bolshoi Ballet’s youngest ever principal (prima ballerina) at the age of 22. In

Text: Natasha Rogai Legacy & Heritage is the theme of this year’s Hong Kong Dance Awards (the Awards). Since they began in 1999 the Awards have themselves become part of the legacy of the dance sector, offering a precious record of its leading lights and their achievements. Hong Kong is notorious for neglecting or forgetting its heritage. Buildings are torn down, iconic local traditions like street hawkers are disappearing, land in the New Territories which held small fa

Text: Natasha Rogai Hong Kong Ballet (HKB) celebrates its 45th anniversary this year and marked the occasion with international guest stars joining the home team for a gala performance. Gala programmes are inevitably a curate’s egg. If there were a few blips on the radar, this one still offered much to enjoy with some outstanding dancing from the guests and HKB’s own artists in works which ranged from gala staples like the Black Swan and Don Quixote pas de deux to three pi

REVIEW: HONG KONG BALLET THE GREAT GATSBY Text: Natasha Rogai Hong Kong Ballet’s revival of artistic director Septime Webre’s The Great Gatsby, previously seen here in 2019, is a big, bold, spectacular show. Consistently entertaining and visually stunning, with wonderful period sets and costumes by Tim Yip, it plunges the audience into the febrile atmosphere of New York in the Roaring 20s. Above all, it is blessed with a gloriously evocative, infectiously toe-tapping score b

Text: Natasha Rogai After many trials and tribulations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Hong Kong Ballet (HKB) at last returned to the...

The Hong Kong Ballet Group (HKBG) celebrated its 55th anniversary in style, with a performance bringing together over 150 local students from numerous ballet schools for a Bournonville programme. Staged in masterly fashion by Vivi Flindt, former principal and ballet mistress of the Royal Danish Ballet and featuring two of the company’s dancers, this was a golden opportunity for local ballet students and audiences to experience the unique qualities of the pure Bournonville sch