For modern dance devotees, July is when the annual Beijing Dance Festival is staged in the capital.

Presented by three Chinese contemporary dance companies - the Beijing Dance/LDTX, the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and the Hong Kong's City Contemporary Dance Company - the festival is divided into two parts.

In the first week, choreographers and dancers from around the world offer educational programs to modern dance lovers.

The second week is performance time when 15 contemporary dance works will be presented by Asian troupes and artists from 10 countries, including Israel and South Korea.

Choreographer-dancer Ma Bo's latest production, Narrow Escape - The Long March, will open the event. Another Ma work, Faded Monologue, opened last year's Beijing Dance Festival.

The Long March, which started in 1934, was a two-year tactical retreat by the Red Army to evade Kuomintang forces.

"Usually, I tell my own stories in my works," says Ma, the resident choreographer of Beijing Dance/LDTX. "But this is the first time that I choreographed a work, which is based on such an important historical event.

"In this work, I focus on a person's physical journey and psychological path. It's about life and death."

Meanwhile, there are also treats for younger audiences.

Programs like "Springboard" and the "Youth Dance Marathon" will showcase avant-garde and dance works by artists from Finland, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the Chinese mainland.

Speaking of the offerings by the young talents, Willy Tsao, the artistic director and founder of the Beijing Dance Festival, says: "Personally, the section showcasing works by young choreographers is my favorite.

"All their works are very short and well-choreographed. Every year, these new talents surprise both the audiences and veteran choreographers."

Veteran choreographer Tsao, who founded Hong Kong's first contemporary dance troupe, the City Contemporary Dance Company, in 1979, and Beijing Dance/LDTX in 2005, says that besides Chinese young choreographers, the festival also attracts talent from around the world.

Russian choreographer Andrey Korolenko - who has been working with non-professional dancers since 2010 - will showcase two works, Disagreement and Modus, at the festival.

Disagreement is a duet about differences between lovers, while Modus is a 20-minute solo performance about the strength of the human spirit.

Speaking to China Daily about taking part in the festival, Korolenko, who started dancing at 6, and teaches contemporary dance in Novosibirsk, says: "I traveled to China when I was young and I have been interested in Chinese culture ever since. I am familiar with Chinese choreographer Hou Ying's works, which are very different from Russian contemporary dance works.

"It is a pleasure for me to work in China with the (non-professional) dancers."

Csaba Buday, the lecturer in contemporary dance and resident choreographer for dance in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology, in Australia, has been taking part in dance festivals in China even before the Beijing Dance Festival was launched.

His ties to dance festivals in China go back to 2008, when Tsao held a week-long contemporary dance festival in Guangzhou.

At that time, Buday traveled to China with 14 students from the Queensland University of Technology to perform at the Guangdong Modern Dance Festival.

In 2011, the festival was moved to Beijing and expanded to two weeks when it became the Beijing Dance Festival.

Buday's links with dance in the region go back a long way. The choreographer, who was the artist-in-residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from 2000 to 2003, used to travel frequently to Guangzhou to teach and choreograph performances.

He later returned to Australia to take up a position at the Queensland University of Technology.

Now, he is in Beijing with 17 students - 15 dancers and two handling technical production - from the university to perform The Tipping Point at the festival.

(China Daily USA 07/13/2016 page8)