Duo behind Asian Grand Prix hope to lift ballet to new heights

The ballet school that So Hon-wah runs is in a grim industrial building just a short walk from Fortress Hill. The venue is strictly functional, no-frills. Visitors arrive via a service lift.

Once inside, the former Hong Kong Ballet dancer gently shoos his two children Hiroki, four, and Reina, two, out of a cluttered, windowless meeting room to make space amid the casually discarded bags, stacks of paperwork and a mini-bar stocked with energy drinks.

This, it turns out, is the nerve centre of operations behind this week's Asian Grand Prix International Ballet Competition, the city's only international ballet contest.

This year's competition has attracted more than 200 entries from as far afield as Australia and Russia. That's more than double the 80 hopefuls that lined up for 2011's inaugural event.

There's some buzz around the news that one of the entrants is a rising star at Moscow's legendary Bolshoi Ballet. The annual competition is all about creating opportunities to enable ballet to thrive in Hong Kong, says So, who broke barriers when he became the Hong Kong Ballet's first locally trained male principal dancer.

Everyone knows the story about the plucky ballet prodigy who overcomes prejudice and disadvantage to chase a dream to become a professional dancer, as portrayed in the British hit Billy Elliot (2000).