Lightning Table

Alysa Leung is an artist and dramaturg based in Hong Kong and Europe. She is devoted to researching city, body, and self-identity through intercultural and community arts projects. Her recent research focuses on oceanic cultures.

After receiving an M.A. in Contemporary Theatre, Dance, and Dramaturgy from Utrecht University in 2022, she pursued choreographic research at ImpulzTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival. In 2024, she founded If Time’s Limited, a collective platform working in post-dramatic performance.

Major recent work includes Ivy Says, commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Centre and awarded the "Outstanding Non-Conventional Space Production" at the Hong Kong Dance Awards 2026. Leung’s previous works have been presented across various cities, such as Paris, Ovidiu, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Itoshima, Vienna, Kortrijk, Ticino, Surabaya, and Jakarta.

Leung was awarded Arts Impact Fellowship 2025 (WestK)and the Emerging Artist Grant 2024 (Hong Kong Arts Development Council [HKADC]) and was recognised as resident artist of the “Young Arts Tech Talents Residency Scheme 2024” (HKADC). In 2025, the experimental dance film she made with filmmaker Anson Sham was been selected to screen on Jumping Frames.

Hong Kong-based contemporary dance artist Wayson Poon has lived and worked in Europe and Asia as a creator, performer, and researcher. His work contemplates the state of existence through movement, focusing on awakening the audience's awareness in contemporary life. Notable works include PHONATE, Moving a Memory, and Vortex, which have been performed in Denmark, Finland, Japan, Italy, China, and the United Kingdom. Recently, he co-created the cross-disciplinary work Lotus in Gold un-do with The Gong Strikes One, which was restaged at the Hong Kong Fringe Festival 2026.

Poon received the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in 2019 to further develop his movement research. He received the Dr Tom Brown Memorial Scholarship and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Music and Dance Fund Scholarship in 2022 to complete his master's degree at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with distinction.

Rita Ezenwa-Okoro is a Nigerian cultural strategist, author, and creative facilitator who uses creativity, play, and the performing arts to nurture emerging leaders and strengthen communities. She is Founder and Lead Visionary of Street Project Foundation, a United Nations Award-winning organisation that has empowered thousands of young people through arts-based leadership and entrepreneurship.

Over two decades, Ezenwa-Okoro has pioneered play-based approaches to leadership development across youth development, cultural movements, and community arts. She is Executive Director Emeritus of Global Play Brigade, a movement advancing play as a tool for human development across more than 100 countries.

Ezenwa-Okoro is the author of Doing Being Becoming and creator of the Head Taller Leadership Framework, a developmental approach inspired by play, performance, and imagination. She is currently writing Exercise Your Imagination: For Leaders Who Want to Play a Head Taller.

A Mandela Washington Fellow and the first Nigerian elected to the Board of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), Ezenwa-Okoro is passionate about helping Africa's next generation of creative leaders transform the world through imagination.

When she is not on a mission to change the world, Ezenwa-Okoro makes music, travels, and indulges in the guilty pleasure of a good rom-com.

Maggie Ho is an arts and culture marketer, writer and consultant whose work is grounded in international and intercultural collaboration. Her practice spans communications, marketing, programming, and cultural strategy, with a particular interest in supporting BIPOC and underrepresented artists and connecting diverse communities through arts and culture.

In Hong Kong, she has worked with artists, producers, and cultural organisations from around the world, including Lunchbox Theatrical Productions (UK), Udderbelly Festival (UK) and Cavalia (Canada), and later worked at the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Now based in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, Ho works across performing arts, public-sector arts and culture, and community-based initiatives. Through marketing, consulting, and bilingual writing, she explores how programming, operations, and communications can work together to support artists, strengthen cultural organisations, and foster meaningful connections across cultures and communities.

Laura Gardes is a cultural project manager, specialising in theatre and European cultural cooperation. She works on international projects that connect artists, cultural organisations, and public institutions, with a particular focus on Creative Europe initiatives. Her experience includes Voices of Culture - the structured dialogue between the European Commission and the cultural sector, in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Brussels, as well as international projects in the music and cultural sectors. She holds a master’s degree in Euroculture and has worked in Germany, France, Belgium, and Sweden.

King Chi Lee learnt Cantonese Opera as a hobby during her teenage years. She received formal music education at the Department of Chinese Music at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, majoring in the zheng. In her final year project, she studied the accompaniment of Cantonese Opera, which led her to further her studies at the Music Department at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She developed her research interest in early Cantonese music and its music publishing culture. In her master thesis, she studied The Essential Book of Strings and Songs (絃歌必讀), the earliest extant Cantonese music method book from early twentieth century Hong Kong. She has been active in the local Cantonese Opera scene as well as naamyam and Cantonese music performances.

Together with Kong Chan, she founded The Gong Strikes One in 2012. The group specialises in traditional Chinese theatrical music and embraces various kinds of performances, such as concerts, story-telling concerts, theatre, and improvisation.

Dr Hardi Kurda is a Kurdish composer, sound artist, and artistic researcher whose work explores listening, displacement, memory, archives, and experimental music. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of SPACE21, an independent platform for experimental sound, contemporary music, and artistic research in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. He is also the Founder of Archive Khanah, an initiative dedicated to preserving and activating Kurdish sonic heritage.

Hardi completed his PhD in Music at Goldsmiths, University of London, where his research introduced the concepts of Found Scores and Urgent Listening, examining how sound can reveal overlooked social, political, and ecological realities. His artistic practice combines field recording, performance, interactive technologies, archives, and participatory installations to create new forms of listening and cultural engagement.

His work has been presented internationally at leading festivals, galleries, and research institutions across Europe and the Middle East. Alongside his artistic practice, he develops projects that connect artistic research, cultural heritage, technology, and community participation, with a particular focus on Kurdish culture and sonic ecologies.

As host, Dr Hardi Kurda brings extensive international experience as an artist, researcher, curator, and educator, creating thoughtful conversations that bridge artistic practice, academic research, and intercultural exchange.