Organised by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, the third edition of the Chinese Culture Festival will open this June with Lady White Snake, a dance drama that reinterprets the centuries-old Chinese legend The Legend of the White Snake through the lens of modern womanhood, identity and emotional conflict.
Led by internationally acclaimed ballet artist Tan YuanYuan as artistic director, the production brings together a top-tier creative team, leading dancers from the Chinese Mainland and abroad with performers from the Shanghai Opera House Dance Ensemble. The Hong Kong performances also mark Tan’s return to the city after appearing as a guest principal dancer with the Hong Kong Ballet in 2008.
Speaking about her return, Tan said taking on the role of artistic director represented a significant shift from being a performer on stage to steering an entire production. Rather than focusing solely on personal artistic expression, she is now responsible for the work’s overall creative direction, collaboration between the artistic team and the production’s cultural message.
“The sense of responsibility is the greatest challenge,” she said. “I hope audiences in Hong Kong will feel the contemporary vitality of this thousand-year-old legend and experience the charm of oriental stage aesthetics expressed through an international artistic language.”
This new interpretation transforms the familiar characters of Lady White (White Snake), Xu Xian and Fa Hai into modern figures representing a wife, husband and psychologist respectively. Meanwhile, Xiao Qing (Green Snake) is no longer portrayed as the White Snake’s younger sister. Instead, she becomes a projection of the wife’s inner self — symbolising the part of women that remains innocent, romantic and deeply driven by independence.
Hypnosis serves as the production’s narrative entry point, creating a bridge between reality and the subconscious. Through this framework, the performance explores the emotional and psychological struggles faced by contemporary women as they navigate identity, relationships and personal fulfilment.
Rather than retelling the original folklore literally, the production invites audiences to reflect on how traditional expectations placed upon women continue to resonate today. Ideas of being gentle, obedient and family-oriented are examined as invisible pressures that often leave women caught between personal aspirations and social expectations.
Tan noted that similar expectations exist within the ballet world itself.
“You are expected to be slim, beautiful and resilient, yet people still ask how you balance career and family,” she said. “Sometimes traditional values can become a gentle form of restraint. We are not trying to abandon tradition, but we hope women can truly be themselves beyond simply being a ‘good daughter’ or ‘good wife’.”
The production also places strong emphasis on visual storytelling through stage design, lighting and movement. The “real world” inhabited by the wife is expressed through minimalist and cold-toned aesthetics, geometric lines and enclosed spatial arrangements, creating an atmosphere of tension and emotional suppression.
In contrast, scenes representing dreams and the subconscious feature softer, fluid lighting, multimedia projections aesthetics and freer, more expressive choreography. The juxtaposition between the two worlds allows audiences to move naturally between realism and imagination.
Dance itself becomes another key language of fusion. Rather than adhering strictly to a single dance tradition, Lady White Snake blends ballet, Chinese dance and contemporary dance into one unified movement vocabulary. Ballet contributes elegance and refinement, Chinese dance introduces distinctly Eastern poetic sensibilities, while contemporary dance conveys the emotional and psychological realities of modern life.
According to Tan, integrating these different styles requires dancers to retrain their bodies extensively because each dance form is built upon fundamentally different physical techniques and movement logic. Only through long-term practice can performers achieve a precise balance between Eastern and Western aesthetics, as well as between classical and contemporary expression.
In addition to the performances, the production will present a series of extension activities, including pre-talk, dance masterclass, "Chinese Culture for All: A Special Performance Series", post-performance meet-the-artist session and dance workshop.
Date: 12*–13 June 2026 (*post-show meet-the-artist session on 12 June)
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Grand Theatre
Ticket Prices: HK$220–620
