The #DANCELESS Complex program (2024-2026) is an initiative of a “Soft Network” of five sister organisations in the Asia-Pacific including: lead-producer Unlock Dancing Plaza (Hong Kong); Thinkers Studio (Taipei); Dance Nucleus (Singapore); Ergao Dance (Guangzhou); and Dancehouse (Melbourne).

This exciting international exchange program invites partners to support and host artists in residence to create a new work to premiere at #DANCESSLESS Complex contemporary dance festival in Hong Kong, June 2026.

Each partner supports a local artist/s to create a work for #DANCELESS Complex, a contemporary dance festival produced by Unlock Dancing Plaza in Hong Kong, May 2026. 

• In Phase 1, partners and artists met in a lab hosted by Ergao Dance Production Group, Guangzhou (2024) 
• In Phase 2, partners will host residencies by visiting artists (2025-2026) 
• In Phase 3, partners and artists reconvene to present their works as part of #DANCELESS Complex festival in Hong Kong (2026) 
• In Phase 4, partners will actively seek opportunities and resources to tour the works in the Festival to our communities

Artists include:

• Sarah Aiken (Australia — Dancehouse);
• Norhaizad Adam (Singapore — Dance Nucleus);
• CHAN Wai Lok (Hong Kong — Unlock Dancing Plaza); and
• Albert Garcia (Taiwan — Thinkers Studio).

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

#DANCELESS Complex Festival | 13-18 June 2026, The Turns, East Kowloon Cultural Centre

** FULL PROGRAM TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON **

At the week-long #DANCELESS complex 2026 festival, commissioned choreographers will present new works developed from their residency programmes. They will also conduct their own workshops and open rehearsals, extending from a single work to the development of choreographic thinking and shifting in focus at different points in the residency. This will allow the audience to understand the various aspects of the work’s development process from a deeper context.

Conceived as an artist-initiated platform fostering in-depth exchange across the Asia-Pacific region, #DANCELESS complex centres on contemporary dance and performance as a site for dialogue, experimentation, and critical reflection.

The 2026 edition will feature:

Four newly commissioned works

• The Bug Is on Fire: First Ignitions by Albert GARCIA (Taipei | Philippines)
• The Golden and The Fortunate by CHAN Wai-lok (Hong Kong)
• Plot Hole by Sarah AIKEN (Melbourne)
• Berahi: Holy Unions by Norhaizad ADAM (Singapore)

Alongside

• A closing performance: Complement: Two eyes by Choi x Kang Project (Seoul)
• A series of artist talks and roundtable discussions
• An independent choreographers’ pitching session, creating opportunities for new collaborations and touring dialogues

Dancehouse Program Activities

Phase 1: Collective Lab in Guangzhou, China

— November 2024

PHASE 1: Collaborative Lab / Nov 2025 — Completed

All artists, partners and Hong Kong collaborating designers met in a 2 week lab in Nov 2025 hosted by Ergao Dance in Guangzhou, China. This critical phase was paid for by partners. 

Sarah Aiken and Josh Wright, Dancehouse attended. Dancehouse extended Sarah’s stay with 4-nights in Hong Kong to extend relationships from the Lab.

Phase 2 Independent Residencies

Norhaizad Adam at Dancehouse | 13-19 June 2025

FAP (Flirtatiousness and Politeness) Workshop by Norhaizad Adam and Hasyimah Harith (Singapore)

What does it mean to flirt politely? How do our bodies navigate between restraint and desire?

FAP (Flirtatiousness and Politeness) is a new performance work in development that explores the delicate interplay between attraction and decorum—from the flicker of subtle charm to the bold expression of “berahi” (sexual arousal in Malay).

Partners in life and art, Norhaizad Adam and Hasyimah Harith investigate how cultural codes and traditions shape the ways we perform intimacy, desire, and social grace through bodily ritual and poetic charm.

Grounded in movement research and framed by a historical-sociological lens, FAP draws from “Perhimpunan Gunawan bagi Laki-Laki dan Perempuan” (A Compendium of Charms for Men and Women), a 1911 Malay sexual manuscript by Khatijah Terung. FAP asks: what remains seductive today?

Sarah Aiken at Barn 169 Theater, Taoyuan, Taiwan | 17-31 July 2025

Supported and hosted by Thinkers Studio, Sarah will be at Barn 169 Theater, Taoyuan just outside of Taipei, Taiwan.

Sarah Aiken at Unlock Dancing Plaza, Hong Kong | 16-28 March 2026

Sarah Aiken at Dancehouse | December 2025 and May-June 2026

About the Artists

Sarah Aiken is an artist, performer and choreographer based in Naarm (Melbourne). Her work investigates assemblage, authorship, scale and self, looking at the roles of audience, performer, subject and object and connecting tangibly with audiences, to consider performance as a site for empathy & exchange. Make Your Life Count premiered at Arts House, Melbourne in 2022 (Platform Arts 23, PICA Perth 25 and Sydney Dance Company 24, with video presentations at Federation Square, Gertrude Street Projection Festival, MCA, and Frame Biennial of Dance). The work won an Australian Greenroom Award for Best Visual Design. Other works include Spanning (Soft Centre X Chunky Move 2024), Body Corp (CONTACT HIGH Gertrude Contemporary 2024), Demake/Demaster (STRUT 2022), Piece for pieces (PIECES LGI/The Substation 2019), What Am I Supposed To Do? (Arts Centre Melbourne 2019) and SARAHAIKEN (Keir Choreographic Award 2016). Sarah is co-director of Deep Soulful Sweats, working with Rebecca Jensen for 10 years across the world, inviting audiences into cathartic and thoughtful performative experiences. Sarah was artist in residence at Helsinki International Artists Program, Dancenorth, and Centre for Projection Art. She is a grateful recipient of the Creators Fund, and the Chloe Munro Fellowship. 

Norhaizad Adam (He/Him) performs and choreographs for unconventional community spaces, galleries and theatres. Central to his Malay dance practice is considering the performativity of everyday rituals and the ways that accessing tradition can be a form of wisdom for modernity. His works deal with labour, morality and behaviourism in Malay culture. He is an Associate of Dance Nucleus and the artistic director of P7:1SMA (pronounced prisma), a dance company that aims to radically shift the perspective of Malay dance through intimate and innovative performance experiences. In 2021, he received the National Art Council’s Young Artist Award.

CHAN Wai Lok a Hong Kong choreographer and performer completed his studies in P.A.R.T.S. (Belgium) upon receiving scholarships from the [DNA] network supported by Creative Europe under the European Commission and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Music and Dance Fund. He previously studied in SEAD (Austria) after graduating from the Architecture Studies in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His recent works include Reverie (2022), Click (2021) and An Auction without Bass (2021) unfolding perspectives in performativity and choreography. Other works include In the Cloud (2022), provoking the audience’s imagination into body movement and performance; and {POV [TWINK / COUPLE (ASIAN) / EXPERIMENTAL]} (2021) and its video version POV, demonstrating the texture and connection between live and video performance. Democratic interpretation and emancipation in audience has been one of the major genres he has been exploring in his previous solo Everyone knows what it means to think (2019) and his collaboration with Mariana Miranda (2019). He collaborated with various artists including Cristian Duarte, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Meytal Blanaru, KT Yau Cherry Leung and Joseph Lee. In 2020, he, together with his fellows, established an independent art space, ngau4 gat1 dei6, which is an art project exploring how to operate and sustain such art space in local art scene, and sharing spatial resources with fellow artists. 

#DANCELESS Complex Partners and funders include