The dance club scene behind Hong Kong’s biggest coronavirus cluster
- Sweeping the intergenerational dancing community, a growing cluster of 311 cases linked to dance venues is driving Hong Kong’s fourth Covid-19 wave
- Women keen to impress at local events pay top dollar for professional dance partners, with some even brought over the border by speedboat
Drawn by the music and the mingling, many Hong Kong retirees converge on the city’s vast network of dance halls, escaping from the clutches of boredom and into the arms of their shimmying partners.
Eager to impress, well-heeled, typically female members of the community can spend huge sums on younger instructors, even using speedboats to ferry teachers to the city from mainland China for a night on the tiles.
But the community – and the growing cluster of infections linked to it – cuts across social class, with people from both lower-income and wealthy households falling ill after dancing in clubs, studios, restaurants, banquet halls and private venues.
Those inside the industry have lamented the bad press and loss of income, but the outbreak is likely to also have an effect on those, particularly older women, for whom dancing is a social lifeline.
“Their husbands don’t dance, they prefer to play ball games like golf … So these dance venues became a vibrant recreational market,” said George Yip Chi-wai, president of Hong Kong DanceSport Association.