A Ballet About Sand Dunes? Hong Kong Ballet’s Daring ‘Dunhuang’

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How do you make a ballet about a historic site? That’s the conundrum that confronted the creative team behind Hong Kong Ballet’s (HKB) bold new work, which takes its inspiration from the roaring winds of desert wilderness — from Silk Road cave temples to Dunhuang’s immense golden sand dunes. We’re in good hands: the fantastical Dunhuang: In Search of Light comes from the same creative team behind HKB’s hit original retelling of Chinese folktale The Butterfly Lovers — which last year travelled to New York’s Lincoln Centre following its 2024 local debut. 

For this fresh production, the company’s choreographer-in-residence Hu Song Wei Ricky and his choreographer wife Mai Jingwen have once again collaborated with composer Tian Mi to produce a completely fresh work. The libretto draws from Hermann Hesse’s spiritual novel 1922 novel Siddhartha while Mi’s specially commissioned score will be rendered live by Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Together these elements tell the coming-of-age story of an unnamed young man, played by rising star Gouta Seki, battling fleshly desire in his search for light purity. The celestial beings who guide this moral struggle lent the piece an especially poetic physical flourish in the sneak preview a small audience witnessed at the company’s recent Summer Fling showcase. 

As HKB’s season opener, this boldly thematic, regionally focused world premiere appears to be a statement of intent from a company unafraid of risk and increasingly eager to take thematic leaps of faith. After all, the 2026/27 cycle will close with a tribute to no lesser legend than Bruce Lee, another brand new work this time helmed by HKB’s change-agent-in-chief, artistic director Septime Webre, to be premiered in summer 2027.