Few in the dance community were surprised when Kimball Wong won the Australian Dance Award for Best Performance by a Male Dancer last year. A member of Australian Dance Theatre for six years, Wong’s jaw-droppingly acrobatic dancing has regularly won him accolades. Settling into his chair in a cafe near ADT’s Adelaide studios, Wong describes the award as a “beautiful experience”. “The most amazing and moving thing was how happy people were for me, the volume of support and congratulations that poured in,” he tells me, “that recognition from your peers just means so much.”
Perhaps the most important recognition has been from his father, who has always had reservations about his career choice. “Dad is Chinese and he’s a dentist, and he worries about security and money, so he can’t see that it’s not necessary for me to make a fortune,” Wong says. “I kind of laugh it off now but it wasn’t the easiest thing to deal with when I was just starting out.”On the other hand his mum, who is much more artistically inclined, is enthusiastic, and despite living in the UK, she sees him perform whenever she can and is warmly supportive of his dancing.
New Zealand born, Wong moved to Cambridge in the UK with his family when he was three. Always a physically active child, by the age of seven he was doing gymnastics, but his dream was always to perform, preferably as a movie star! His talents must have been obvious to the teachers, since when he went to his school interview for A levels—the equivalent of Year 12—he recalls the panel telling him, ‘If you come here, you ARE doing dance!’
Even so, it wasn’t until Kenneth Tharp (now Chief Executive of The Place), choreographed a piece for the school, and recommended that Wong attend the Millennium Arts School in London, that he considered dance as a career. At Millennium he did his first ballet class: “I had to buy tights, shoes, and dance support, then after I put them all on, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, my god, what are you doing here?”He learnt the distinct disciplines of ballet, jazz, tap and contemporary dance, recalling “Up until that point I’d just done dance –movement -- I didn’t know what to call anything. It was generic. I had no idea what a tendu was.” Once he’d learnt the names of the steps though, he developed the passion for technique --especially Cunningham -- that still drives him.
Even among the talented students at this prestigious school, Wong’s abilities must have stood out, because while in first year he was asked by noted British choreographer Michael Clark to work with him on a project. “The first project was Would Should Can Did, performed at the Barbican, which was an amazing experience. Then I worked with him again in third year on O My Goddess.”
After graduating, he freelanced for a year before taking a contract with Phoenix Dance Theatre, a Leeds company with whom he stayed for two years, dancing in works by Robert Cohen, Darshan Singh Bullar and Javier de Frutos, among others. Here that he met British dancer Kialea-Nadine Williams, who has been his partner for the past seven years.
This is an extract from a feature article by Maggie Tonkin in the Oct/Nov issue of Dance Australia. OUT NOW!
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