Role model

Anna CY Chan seems to have come a full circle. Some weeks back, when she entered a Gifted Young Dancer Program showcase at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), the parents in the audience stood up and clapped in her honor. Unbeknownst to her, the news of her appointment as the institute's director was out in the public domain and the recognition from the parents of 11-to-18-year-olds — testing the waters before they decided whether to pursue dance as a vocation — meant a lot, especially seeing that traditionally Hong Kong parents have preferred their children to go for academic programs that would set them up for life. And training in dance — a field in which jobs are few and stage careers are usually over by the age of 40 — certainly wasn't one of them.

"Suddenly I realized that I've become a role model for dancers having a proper, sustained and even successful career," says Chan, who first entered the lofty portals of the HKAPA's Gloucester Road campus way back in the mid-'80s. Hong Kong's first and so far only integrated tertiary education institute for students training in Chinese Opera, dance, drama, film and television, and theater and entertainment arts was less than two years old at the time. Chan had recently graduated from secondary school and been waiting out the few months before she went to Australia to train in ballet. It was Carl Wolz, the first dean of the HKAPA's School of Dance, who generously invited her to try out a short-term dance program in the interim.

Now vested with the responsibility of steering Hong Kong's leading performing arts school from the front, Chan is keen to extend the scope of the openness and inclusive spirit that she was touched by on that first visit. One of her noteworthy achievements as the dean of the HKAPA's School of Dance — a post she has held since 2018 — was to start the Jockey Club Dance Well Project, aimed at encouraging people suffering from Parkinson's disease to express themselves through dance. Chan says that the experience of the students who guided the participants through the motions has been nothing short of transformative.

"Every time, after a few hours of helping out with the participants, they all come back with tears in their eyes, saying things like: Now I know why I have to do art, that it is not just about myself, it's about the mission."

"This way, our artists of the future know that they can make a difference in the world."