W I L L I A M Y O N G
William Yong's first passion was music. When he was young, he was a member of the Hong Kong Children's Choir and toured numerous festivals and concerts. Then he went on to become the lead-singer and songwriter of a music band Fundamental and a recording artist/group with BMG Asia Pacific Records and Current Records. Fundamental received two prestigious awards: Carlsberg Pop Music Festival band competition 1st runner up and a bronze prize of Hong Kong Commercial Radio's Best New Artist Award.
He received his dance and drama training at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts while he was a singer. After graduation, he was twice the recipient of the HK Jockey Club Dance Fund scholarships. He gave up his singing career and chose to further his dance study in the U.K. at the London Contemporary Dance School. He was sent alone for placement to study with Netherlands Dance Theatre 1 in the last year of MA study, followed by a scholarship to be a member of the LCDS-4D performance group where he worked with several distinguished British choreographers including Richard Alston, Laurie Booth, Nigel Charnock, and Henri Oguike. He completed his Master's Degree with distinction validated by and graduated at University of Kent in Canterbury. Past companies he worked for as a dancer include: Wayne McGregor's Random Dance and Matthew Bourne's Adventures In Motion Pictures in the U.K.; Toronto Dance Theatre, CORPUS, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Lina Cruz/Fila 13, Chimera Project in Canada and many other independent choreographers in both countries.
William's professional dance career spans more than twenty-two years since starting with Random Dance in 1994. He has performed in 75 cities within 15 countries. He presented his first choreography for paying audiences in a production in Freiburg, Germany in 1993 and now he has created over sixty-five dance works world-wide. He is currently the artistic director of Zata Omm - Zen And The Actualization Of Modern Movement (www.zataomm.org) - based in Toronto. He has created many choreographic works for the company including the latest full-length productions vox:lumen. Critics hailed vox:lumen as "...groundbreaking work of eco-dance...It shows Yong going where no Canadian choreographer before him has gone before.” (Critics At Large). “vox:lumen shines brightly, as a moving dance piece, as a technological feat, and as a forerunner in sustainable performance...vox:lumen is the biggest experiment in staging stability in Canadian dance and theatre history.” (My Entertainment World).
William's choreographic works have been presented by major dance presenters such as Toronto's DanceWorks, Harbourfront Centre's World Stage & NextStep, and Tiger Princess Dance, and Montreal's Tangente Laboratoire Mouvements Contemporains and Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI). His works have been shown at festivals and major event such as ÉCLATS-Vitrine Festival Canasian and Festival Accès Asie in Montreal, CorresponDANSE in Quebec City, Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, Toronto's Luminato Festival, Winter City Festival, dance:made in canada/fait au canada, CanAsian Dance Festival, Dance Ontario Weekend, Dusk Dances, Old & Young and Reckless Together, fFIDA, etc.
From 2010 to 2013, he directed the Zata Omm Dance and Technology Research Laboratory funded by the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation. These research aimed to explore the artistic climate and seeks profound relationships between the latest technology and movement as a strategic analysis initiative. William conducted seven unique research residencies with technological artists such as Ying Gao (Interactive garment designer) and Asethetec (Interactive technology studio). Because of William's unique creative vision and ability to produce large-scale technologically intensive works, he was invited to be the guest speaker at Staging Sustainability International Conference, DigiFest's Future 15 Talk, Canadian Dance Assembly's 'Technological Innovation' workshop, Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Dancers' Transition Resource Centre's 'On The Move' conferences, Dance Umbrella of Ontario, Theatre School of Ryerson University, Lululemon Athletica's Career Talk and Toronto District School Board Seminar.
William has been commissioned to choreograph for other dance companies such as Little Pear Garden Company, CORPUS, Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, Toronto Dance Theatre (Four at the Winch), Pivotal Motion Dance Theatre and National Ballet of Canada's gala fundraiser 'Mad Hot Ballet: Lost in Venice'. In the past, he has worked as a performance coach for Olympian Ice-dancing figure skater Paul Poirier, as a mentor for Gadfly, Jasmyn Fyffe Dance, as a technological consultant for Loretta Faveri, as an artistic consultant to Malar Janagan, and as a rehearsal director for Chimera Project, AKA Dance and Piotr Biernat. As an educator, he choreographed for educational institutes like Ryerson University, George Brown College, School of Toronto Dance Theatre, L'école de danse de Québec, Turning Point Dance Academy, Earl Haig Secondary School and Unionville High School. He also taught choreographic workshops and gave master technique classes for World Stage, Series 808, York University, McMaster University, National Ballet of Canada's In Studio, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Lester B. Pearson School for the Arts, GMD, 509 Collective, Theatre Rusticle Gym, Toronto Dance Theatre, Little Pear Garden Collective, Emerging Artists Intensive, Matthew Bourne's AMP and New Adventures.
William and Zata Omm have created two dance short films Sugar and Snails and To Fly or Fall, both directed by Kathi Prosser which were shown in cities and festivals around the world. William also performed in nine other dance films created by others. William is also an actor represented by Graham Talents Agency and appeared in TV and films such as Nikita, Being Erica, Adventure's Inc, Beautiful People, Eve, Just Business, etc. William has choreographed for music videos for Mother Mother's Modern Love and Apocalytica's Cold Blood. In live theatre work, he played the lead role of 'The Wolf' in Peter and The Wolf and played 'The Hero' in Dinner at Seven-Thirty for Theatre Rusticle's stage productions. He was the choreographer and music director for a play Red Snow by Diana Tso in association with Aluna Theatre. William was profiled in three documentaries as a choreographer. One was an episode of the Bravo channel TV show Freedom, another one was documenting him as resident guest choreographer and the creation of Truce for Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, and the third one documenting the making of vox:lumen for World Stage 2015. He was named Emerging Artist of the Month by Emerging Arts Professional. William and his works received four-time Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations. His latest nomination was for Zata Omm's vox:lumen. William was also nominated for the Young Centre Performing Arts Multidisciplinary Dance Artists Award 2012 and K.M. Hunter Artists Award 2013, 2014 and 2015. William was awarded as the winner of 2013 Canadian Dance Assembly's “I love dance/J’aime la danse” Award for Innovation. William Yong's solo Steer and a shared, double-billed production in a programming of 'Dance: Made in Canada/Fait au Canada' Festival won the top honour from NOW magazine as Number One in their top five dance shows in 2013 for the year in review by Kathleen Smith: '...rigorous, virtuosic solos looking in completely different directions...Stunning.'
His major forthcoming projects include the full-length solo version of Steer for World Stage 2016. Steer is currently further developed to be a full-length solo which is the interplay of sound, visual and light interacting with and responding to the frameworks of sensory technology. In addition, he is invited to direct a new theatre play Comfort for The Red Snow Collective, a new play by Diana Tso, in honour of the comfort women in Asia during WWII & the resilience women in war will have its world premiere production in November 2016.
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