A Dream Life

March in Hong Kong concluded with an extraordinary week of flowers. In Victoria Park, the annual Hong Kong Flower Show was pitched. Stalls teemed with blossoms and enchanted onlookers. A few curatorial entries struck me: the Oriental Chahua Sayi School displayed discerning examples of the “Sa” technique. Their delicate arrangements of branches, lotus flowers, and light pink peonies stood effectively in tall porcelain vases before landscape and portrait scrolls. There was a charming model of the Star Ferry clotted with succulents. In one fascinating feat, a magenta bougainvillea bonsai was anchored onto a large gray stone. Its thick roots climbed up on the left side of the rock, and a flowering branch cascaded into the air on its right. I haven’t even mentioned the orchids, with over twenty velvety blossoms growing evenly down each stem. That night, when I fell asleep, a wave of petals rushed toward me.

Performance

He Shang Dance Theater: “Dream in the Peony Pavilion” by Li Xing and Huang Jiayuan

Place

Hong Kong Arts Festival, Hong Kong Cultural Center, Hong Kong, March 28, 2026

Words

Alice Courtright

He Shang Dance Theater in “Dream in the Peony Pavilion” by Li Xing and Huang Jiayuan. Photograph courtesy of He Shang Dance Theater

Across the harbor, in Tsim Sha Tsui, another kind of flower show made an impression. “Dream in the Peony Pavilion,” a new version of the famous Chinese Opera, triumphantly concluded the monthlong Hong Kong Arts Festival. The contemporary dance performance was held in the Cultural Center, which, as an aside, is truly a strange building to enter and exit. It reminds one of a giant indoor swimming pool complex. But it manages the large crowds well. And what heights of music and dance can be found in the pleasant halls tucked therein!

“The Peony Pavilion” was written at the end of the sixteenth century by the playwright and poet Tang Xianzu, the literary titan whose influence and acclaim is often compared to William Shakespeare. “The Peony Pavilion,” one of his four dream plays, is one of the longest examples of Chinese kunqu opera, with fifty-five original scenes, intended to be performed over two to three days. The love story explores the defiant depths of dreamworld, the numinous power of unspoken human emotion, and the limitations of reality. In 2012, Tan Dun, the composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, adapted it in a shortened form for the Met.

“Dream in the Peony Pavilion” premiered in Suzhou in April 2025 and was already on its 72nd performance this week, selling out in Hong Kong. The adaptation, produced by the He Shang Dance Theater and directed and choreographed by Li Xing and Huang Jiayuan, honored the historic opera from the beginning. Lines of Chinese poetry were projected on stage, and the high-pitched, ethereal song of a kunqu singer was recurrently played. Behind the dancers and the fabulous moving set of squares hung mesmerizing backdrops. They were filled with abstracted colors and bursts of light, like the haunting oil paintings of the modernist Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki.

He Shang Dance Theater in “Dream in the Peony Pavilion” by Li Xing and Huang Jiayuan. Photograph courtesy of He Shang Dance Theater

Hu Jie led the show in the role of Du Liniang, who gives her heart to a scholar she encounters in her dreams. Like Alice in Wonderland, she falls asleep at the beginning of the story. The whole show is an exploration of the inner world, and Hu was the perfect dancer to carry this project. Even in scenes of playfulness with her mischievous maid, Hu draped a spirit of pensiveness around her character. When her interior life revealed itself, dozens of dancers spun as her emotions in the glorious diaphanous robes of costume designer Li Kun. Hu’s almost quiet presence was not to be mistaken for some kind of weakness. She had marvelous depth.

Du Liniang’s lover, Liu Mengmei, appeared only briefly in the long first act. Played by Luo Yuwen, he arrived in the peony pavilion carrying a willow branch. They made love, passing the branch between them. Luo danced as the serious and convincing apparition that shapes Du Liniang’s fate. He offered attentive strength to her in every gesture, permeating their romantic encounter with something akin to reverence. Like his partner, and the troupe writ large, he acted without pretense or affectation. The audience was never invited to leave the epic storyline. The dancers were totally inside of it, and so were we. In the fast-paced second act, it was delightful to see Luo’s range. He was a rascal and a warrior, teasing the Confucian scholar Chen Zuiliang and fighting valiantly to find the portrait scroll of his beloved.

He Shang Dance Theater in “Dream in the Peony Pavilion” by Li Xing and Huang Jiayuan. Photograph courtesy of He Shang Dance Theater

The dancers glided across the stage in a signature style, which perhaps could be described as somewhere between scurrying and floating. It compounded the sense of dreaming, alongside the unearthly fog that poured out along the stage, and from the underworld, where dancers emerged from the orchestral pit. The audience was captivated between worlds, seen and unseen. Through it all, the Flower Goddess, adorned in red, placidly guided the lovers on toward their victorious resolution.

The music, composed by Zhao Bo, provided an exciting current for the dancers. I was reminded of Kyle Abraham’s “Mercurial Son,” where the dancers and the dance were united as they spun to the cool pulsing music. There was a high entertainment value in the long program, particularly in the fan dance with the Judge of the Underworld. But “Dream in the Peony Pavilion” also had a muted, melancholic quality about it. It was the quintessential love story for academics, for anyone, like myself, who has ever fallen madly in love with an idea. The final scene followed the climactic victory of the serious lovers. They arrived in the hazy world of the Flower Goddess and were swept into a greater harmony as she serenely wrapped her train around herself.

Du Liniang’s dreamworld lingers on in the imagination. What is the power of dreams to shape our real lives? How can we live with so much inner vividness that others cannot see? We need great dream stories like this to remind us of the intense experience of being human, to remember what drives our motivations, and to hope in the possibilities of transcendence from this mundane, cruel world.

Alice Courtright

Alice Courtright lives in Hong Kong. She has written about dance for Oxford Poetry, the New York Times, and Pointe magazine.

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A Dream Life

Alice Courtright

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