Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts looks within to find its new director

Head of dance at the academy Anna Chan promoted to lead the institution. Among her first tasks: hiring her replacement, 2 other school heads

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Anna Chan (centre) has been chosen to fill the vacancy for director of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is currently its head of dance, and began working there as a lecturer in 2003. Photo: HKAPA

Published: 4:15pm, 3 Mar 2025Updated: 5:21pm, 3 Mar 2025

The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) has named Professor Anna Chan Chung-ying its next director following a global search for a successor to Gillian Choa, who retired on January 1.

Chan, the dean of dance at the academy, said in a statement: “It is an incredibly exciting moment to step into the role of director at HKAPA as we mark [40 years] of nurturing talent in the performing arts and film industries this year.

“I am eager to … imagine new possibilities for the academy and strengthen … career opportunities for our students.” She will assume the role on April 18.

Chan is a respected dance educator and administrator who has a long association with the academy, which she initially joined as a lecturer in 2003 after professional dance training in Hong Kong, Australia and the UK.

Professor Gillian Choa, who retired as director of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts on January 1, 2025. Photo: May Tse

She took a four-year break from the academy when she ran the dance programmes of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority from 2014 onwards, during which she launched international exchange programmes and was involved in the design of the Freespace black box theatre and the coming Lyric Theatre Complex. She returned to head the dance school at the HKAPA in 2018.

Founded in 1984, the HKAPA is publicly funded and has around 900 full-time undergraduate students a year in its six schools, which offer undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Chinese opera, dance, drama, film and television, music and theatre and entertainment art.