Dance To New York: The Meaning of Change

The Meaning of Change - Amy Marshall’s recent performance “Tides of Change”,

commissioned by the macau Cultural Centre

Seven months after the launch of the “dance to new york – Choreographer Exchange programme” created by the macau Cultural Centre, the Amy Marshall dance Company (AMDC) and local choreographers Candy Kuok and Stella ho energetically presented the fruit of their labours on the 18th of October in macau. On its world premiere evening, the performance “Tides of Change” was greeted by the local audience with overwhelming enthusiasm. despite critiques of Amy Marshall’s provocative style of overt sentimentalism and her abundant usage of tiresome body movements, one has to admit that the whole project ended in a remarkable success in terms of local acceptance and involvement. groups of local students and friends who met the troupe during school tour workshops waited at the backstage door as if the AMDC were visiting rock stars. unrestrained cheers and applause were showered on them. in retrospect, the generous response of our notoriously “passive” macau audience is worthy of our attention and thoughts.

A small troupe of just nine dancers, including lead choreographer Amy Marshall, the New York-based AMDC enjoys a fame centred on its technical ability, often expressed in terms of powerful physical movements. Local choreographers Stella ho and Candy Kuok both commented on their impressions of the company’s “efficiency” and “skill”, observed during their visit to new york. “Personally, I tend to learn from many different styles and skills,” Candy Kuok says. “in contrast, I realised that the AMDC dancers would rather spend their time focusing on the development of their own style. Though they might seem not to know very much about what

other troupes are doing, they certainly know what they themselves are getting at. The concentration is amazing. This has led them to be experts at what they do.”

During the three-week workshop in New York with the AMDC, Candy and Stella participated in a series of intensive training and brainstorming sessions. “For me, the experience was certainly new,” Stella Ho says. “As my background is based exclusively on Chinese dance, the training sessions in yoga and modern dance gave me a chance to reconsider my previous ap

proach, and my view of Chinese dance was further developed thanks to the distance I experienced.” The influence was certainly not one-sided. as was observed in the performance of “Tides of Change”, a lot of Chinese dance elements were incorporated into Amy Marshall’s choreography.