Infinite Extension

Infinite Extension features dance works by three young choreographers from Hong Kong and Guangzhou—Keung Hoi-ling, Paula Wong and Fu Binjing—offering an immersive contemporary dance theatre experience. Tai Kwun's F Hall is transformed into a personal space, prompting viewers to reflect on their bodies and spatial perception from various angles. The choreographers use movements to explore the multifaceted meaning of "space" through live performances, participatory presentations, and stage installations. 

The choreographers revisit their histories and memories in dance, revealing the tension between individual and dance while re-examining technique, aesthetics, and self-composition. They summon desires and imagination through body-space interactions, navigating the boundaries between consciousness and movement systems. 

Keung Hoi-ling's I Saw a Ping-Pong. I Crushed It. It Was an Egg. redefines the relationship between individual and system using language, imagery, and bodily movements. She traverses between analysis and stream of consciousness that intertwines thoughts with the body. Paula Wong's Come closer, go deeper! explores the female bodily experience and gaze through body postures, inviting the audience to feel the resulting pain, pleasure, tension, and ease with the postures’ flow and shift carrying the gaze of the audience. Fu Binjing's Neverland presents an imaginative realm, reflecting on standardised bodies using artificial materials and waste to connect the body with the external world while questioning beauty, standardization, and meaning. 

Just like the pursuit of infinite outward extension in dance training, the choreographers connect their thoughts to the spaces within and outside the body, transcending the boundaries of the physical form and resonating in space. 

I saw a Ping-Pong. I Crushed it. It was an Egg. 
Choreographer: Keung Hoi-ling 

I resonate deeply with a line from "The Perceptual Body": 
Creation is giving a body to concepts. 
If I were to give my consciousness a body for 30 minutes, 
I am aware of my existence; you are aware of your existence—what would that look like? 

Come closer, go deeper! 
Choreographer: Paula Wong 

Come closer, go deeper! 
Caress the limits of boundaries,  
Let the flexibility of the body become the remedy for liberation,  
Embrace every inch of pain,  
Teetering between love and pain,  
We breathe together.  

Neverland 
Choreographer: Fu Binjing 

“…Everyone yearns for a paradise of happiness, a land that creates beautiful dreams...”
This is a paradise of reality and virtuality. 
Here, perfection and splendor exist. 
Here, intimacy and companionship thrive. 
Here, the present and the future coexist. 
In this place, one can forget all worries, 
And possess infinite joy and strength. 
This place never stops, always open for you! 

Reclaiming Space with Resilient Grace 

An Observer's Perspective 

Joseph Lee 

I often feel that choreographers should try creating and performing a solo piece themselves at least once, based on my experience. Creating a solo is often a moment of facing oneself—without the visual spectacle of other bodies stacked together, without the complex transitions of formations, without the explicit relationships between dancers. This often drives the choreographer to consider the arrangement of non-human “bodies” that make up the performance (whether objects, props, lighting, or other media), the relationship between oneself and the audience, identity politics, and personal history, all becoming source material. These elements shape a specific creative process and way of thinking, like a journey of self-reflection, carefully reading oneself, selecting elements, and then presenting them effectively. The process requires facing one's desires, principles, preferences, fears, and expectations. Good solo works often need sincerity as fuel, complemented by a unique way of seeing the world, blending body, movement, imagery, and concepts, and placing them on stage. As the only flesh-and-blood figure on stage, one is both powerful and incredibly vulnerable. 

With all three choreographers creating solo dances, their dancing figures were often glimpsed in the rehearsal studio. However, they in fact spent more time alone in contemplation as well as communicating and testing ideas with the production team. The silhouettes of the artist and researcher seemed to overlap at these moments, aligned with the same sensitivity and focus. 

If space invisibly disciplines women's subjectivity and agency, the presentation of these three works seems to be witnessing how they reclaim space with their bodies. In the upcoming hour and a half we will experience together, the space of F Hall Studio becomes resilient and unpredictable due to their dancing, squeezing out more room for imagination within the rigid framework—about their bodily experiences and about your participation. 

Let us stretch and extend our thoughts together, relax and open our bodies and minds, and follow them into this unknown territory. 

Keung Hoi-ling 

Between dance and me, there is only the connection of the body.

My choreographic journey begins with observing and reflecting on the dynamic interaction between myself and the systems around me. By integrating the past and present, I explore new elements and expand the boundaries of my understanding of dance. This process is not linear but rather takes its form through the interweaving of then and now.

Dance transcends the physical form. After diverse training methods and the experience of being a professional dancer, I am certain that dance is not solely about aesthetics or physicality, just as a person is not defined solely by height or weight. If each creation is a visualisation of my perspective on the world, I believe dance is rich with logic, association, imagination, sensory experience, and intuition. Each of these exists as an independent entity within our bodies, interacting and conversing in my movement, forming the present moment. I firmly believe that dance is an experience accessible to everyone. Therefore, I experiment with words as a medium to make these presences visualisable, hoping to allow a wider audience to participate in the dance I see, and share in the joy of experiencing the present moment and the world around us.

Paula Wong 

"Paula, your butt is facing the audience and moving like that might not be ideal."

I believe this statement is not just commenting on whether my butt looks good. It makes me constantly think about how a body stretching, especially a female body, is viewed and defined.

“Come closer, go deeper!” uses stretching exercises as an introduction. I will lead the audience on a stretching journey that is painful but enjoyable. You can decide on your own the limit of your stretch, experiencing the pain, tension, composure, and pleasure brought about by various stretching postures. You will physically feel how bodily postures carry the gaze of the viewer in their transitions and how, within an environment of being gazed upon, the tension between being viewed and self-empowerment is constantly reconstructed.

If viewing is a form of power, then deciding how one is viewed is also a form of power.

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

And we are using the angle of our hip bone to stretch open the dimensions of freedom, millimeter by millimeter.

Fu Binjing 

To Our Visitors: 

Welcome to "Paradise." Here, you'll find a familiar and beautiful figure. Perhaps you've grown accustomed to her presence? But does a preposterous story lie behind her beauty?

Born in the 90s and as an only child, you grew up amidst the expectations and contradictions of parents hoping you'd become extraordinary. As a child, you loved watching Sailor Moon. As a teenager, you, like your friends, were obsessed with K-pop stars. You were always a "good girl." Then, one day, you became curious about what exactly was disciplining your body and your self-perception. On your phone, your WeChat moments constantly flash with updates. Your smartwatch continuously monitors your real-time bodily data. You are constantly running towards the path of achieving a "perfect body."

You feel like a product on a shelf. You clearly have feelings, and the touch and warmth of human connection that you yearn for feel like a breath of spring in a frozen world. Your heartbeat now pounds like a drum constantly striking your exquisite crystal shell. You want to wake up...

The script will be continued by you.

Special thanks to Gold Mountain for providing dramaturgical support and assistance for the creation of the work.

Exploring Dimensions of Space through Contemporary Dance: An Interview with the Team behind Infinite Extension 
 

In Infinite Extension, the relationship between the body and space is explored through three short dances. According to Joseph Lee, Artistic Director of Unlock Dancing Plaza, who has been working with the three choreographers, the programme attempts to traverse between the myriad of opposite dimensions including “the inside and outside the body, imagination and reality as well as the three- and two-dimensional.” Keung Hoi-ling’s I Saw a Ping-Pong... expands from intimate perceptions to the external world. Paula Wong’s Come closer, go deeper! transforms the performance venue into a spatial experience of mutual gaze while Fu Binjing’s Neverland deconstructs the flattened standardisation of beauty through interplay between 2D and 3D. 

Keung Hoi-ling enjoys breaking through the surface of dance postures to delve into the innate significance of movements. Centering on the "imagined body," Keung weaves between mental imagery and physical movements. Introducing text as a medium, she deciphers the flow of consciousness behind the movements through fragmented narratives including Labanotation and personal experiences. She hopes that even those unfamiliar with dance can appreciate the work: "Using text as a medium is therefore a new attempt and the biggest challenge in the performance.” 

Paula Wong’s creation originated from a stretching exercise in the past - when she was studying in Taiwan, she did a split in front of her instructor and was stunned by the instructor’s immediate response: "Your butt is facing the audience. Moreover, the movements feel somewhat inappropriate." This led her to realise the persistent objectification and gaze placed upon the female body. To Wong, this begs the question: “How can we reclaim our bodily autonomy?" Building on reflections from her previous work, Wong invites the audience to interact and to participate in stretching. Through deliberately designed and guided movements, Wong transforms the power structure into a mirror-like dialogue, questioning the ownership of bodily autonomy. 

Fu Binjing’s inspiration began with her sense of disorientation after leaving a dance company and continued with confronting the erosion of physical perception due to digitalisation. The work incorporates standardised moves of the K-pop idols she admired during her youth. She deliberately disrupts “perfection” with “human intervention”, highlighting the discomfort of the times: “Will our bodies still exist in the future?” As AI reconfigures our dimensions of existence, how do we affirm our own reality? Emphasising that she is not resistant towards technology, Fu simply seeks to explore human-machine coexistence and create a new sensory vocabulary for such symbiosis through dance - embracing the possibilities of the virtual while preserving the body as the last bastion of resistance to alienation.