The Way We Keep Dancing

After the feature, enjoy a FREE bonus pre-recorded Q&A with director Adam Wong, director of THE WAY WE KEEP DANCING.

* Limited tickets available.

Closing Night Film, 2020 Golden Horse Film Festival

In 2013, the low-budget surprise The Way We Dance (SDAFF ’13) took street dancing to the Hong Kong mainstream. The buoyant choreography and the fresh faces had audiences demanding a sequel. But by 2020, the Hong Kong streets had lost that indie innocence. Hip-hop may romanticize the streets, but does it own them? Director Adam Wong answers with a brilliant conceit: rather than making a sequel, why not imagine the fallout from trying to replicate one’s breakthrough? The stars are on the cusp of YouTube stardom, dance studio success, and a rap career, and the city bureaucrats and gentrifiers take notice, asking “how about hip-hop branded real estate?” “Why not use graffiti to raise the rents?”

The artists in THE WAY WE KEEP DANCING pop and lock with nervous intentions in this new corporate reality, and the film builds a tense momentum towards an outcome that is neither obvious nor inevitable, least of all in a Hong Kong where the aspiration to keep doing anything the way it’s been done is a radical sentiment. To keep dancing is to keep the city from predators, to keep the spirit of Hong Kong moving through the body and the lyrics, winding past food stalls and underpasses, tracing a city that refuses to die.

–Brian Hu

Co-Presented by Asian Business Association, Convoy District Partnership, Alliance of Chinese Americans, San Diego