Born in Honolulu in the US state of Hawaii and raised in Hong Kong, Heung spent several years as a dancer in New York before returning in 2023 to Hong Kong to compete in the ViuTV talent show King Maker V.
Fast forward a year and Heung has just debuted Unspoken, a live dance show centred around the idea of a lost love that promises to reveal a previously unseen side of him. The concept show, which can also be described as a piece of dance theatre, will be staged at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in Wan Chai until May 12.
Shanghai Ballet’s A Sigh of Love looked great but never came to life
Shanghai Ballet’s A Sigh of Love looked great but never came to life
Heung may have always had an innate talent for movement and dance, but the journey to this point in his career has been one full of ups and downs.
The dancer fell in love with the performing arts at the age of nine, when his music teacher encouraged him to take part in a school production of the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. Two years later, his mum got him to take up ballroom dancing.
“I’m like, ‘Why am I in heels?’” he recalls, laughing. “It was not cool at all. Everyone was playing soccer or doing hip hop, and I didn’t get to do any of that. But it helped me let out my energy because I did have fun in class. I actually liked moving that way.”
However, as he was not doing particularly well in his studies in Hong Kong, Heung’s parents sent him back to Hawaii when he was 16. He spent the next four years there – two in high school and another two studying hotel management.
“I was struggling in Hawaii,” Heung says of not being able to follow his true passion – but, while in community college, he met an English professor who told him to read a book about childhood dreams.
“Because of him, and because of that book, I got to that point of, ‘Why am I not chasing my childhood dream?’” he recalls. Unbeknown to his parents, Heung dropped out of school and bought a ticket back to Hong Kong.
“This is how much I want it. I’m going to go to theatre school,” he told his parents after he landed. The performer spent a year at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, before heading to the University of Kent in the United Kingdom for three years to study drama and theatre.
In 2020, Heung found some success: he was cast as an ensemble member for the national tour of Chicago the Musical, and appeared in the NBC special One Night Only: The Best of Broadway on American television.
Chicago was halted when Covid-19 hit and the dancer was left feeling defeated and wondering what he should do next. That was when his wife, Zoe Lau, suggested he audition for King Maker V.
“She was like, ‘Sometimes you don’t get what you want. Sometimes you have to come in from the side. Do you want to give this a shot?’ I’m like, ‘This is a real side door’,” he says with a laugh.
Although he had been away from Hong Kong for a while, was older than most participants and did not specialise in the type of dancing typically seen in the show, he decided to give it a shot anyway.
“[Heung] really stood out in the crowd, because he has this very natural charisma that a performer really needs,” Velasco says of meeting him for the first time. “He’s not just a dancer or a singer or a performer – he is an artist.”
However, she adds: “At the beginning of the competition, I could still feel that he was still trying to figure out how he wanted to present himself.”
That is why, during the course of King Maker V, the two worked on showing Heung’s vulnerability in his performances. “I just wanted to let him know that it’s not all glam. If you want to show yourself, we also need to see the weak side of you,” Velasco says.
Heung also received help from stage director German Cheung Ming-yiu – Velasco’s husband – who directed several of Heung’s King Maker V performances and pushed the dancer to “find the why” in every dance.
“He would really scratch and ask questions and dive in, and then actually make you question: why are you performing the way you’re performing?” Heung says. “That’s what I love, and that’s why I want to be in this industry.”
After becoming “really all-rounded”, as Velasco describes it, Heung won the competition, and in the months after, the trio began establishing a genuine friendship outside the show.
It was then that they began discussing the possibility of creating a dance concept show about a man dealing with grief from losing his wife.
“[Heung and I] thought about how we both have wives – if we lost our other half, what would that be like? If we lost what we loved most, how would we go on? Unspoken was born from this starting point.”
Unspoken, which lasts about an hour and 45 minutes, follows the protagonist as he remains stuck in the day of his late wife’s death, revisiting his memories of her.
While the show mostly consists of dances – choreographed to existing hits and newly composed pieces – it is interspersed with scenes with dialogue that feature Cheung and Velasco as husband and wife.
“It’s as if we entered this person’s mind,” Cheung says. “In this moment, how chaotic is his world? What memories, shadows, fears are affecting him? It’s like we’re accompanying him throughout this process of loss, and slowly finding a way out.”
For all three performers, Unspoken is unlike anything they have ever worked on before. It is a key departure from the dance performances you might see on King Maker, in Broadway musicals and stage plays – although it combines elements of all three. The result is a layered piece of work, where one singular scene might have several moving components.
“I like to think of dance theatre as moving pictures,” Heung says. “When you watch old Disney movies and how they’re made, it’s basically a layer of picture, and then another layer [with] the characters, and another layer [of] something else. That’s what we’re trying to create with some of our pieces.”
The show – speech-free for most of it – places full emphasis on the body as a method of expression.
“Language is supposed to make things more clear, but sometimes language makes things more complicated, to the point where we aren’t able to understand each other at all,” Cheung says. “That’s why there’s this Unspoken show – we’re trying to use our bodies and movement to find understanding.”
For Heung, the show has been a huge undertaking – but he is optimistic that people will appreciate seeing his new side of him.
“It’s been a process, but I love this process, because it’s art. It’s creating. You have to struggle. It’s not always happy-go-lucky,” he says. “I hope I get to do more of this for everyone to see. I hope I do the people of Hong Kong proud.”
If you have suicidal thoughts, or you know someone who is, help is available. For Hong Kong, dial +852 18111 for the government-run “Mental Health Support Hotline” or +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans and +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.