I worked with the same trainer that worked with Denzel Washington in THe Hurricane. It was three months of training, five days a week, 4 to 5 hours a day. This was followed by a month of choreography.
Fighting is kind of like choreography. It's not just get in there and punching someone: you have to have choreography. Someone is going to hit high; someone is going to hit at the bottom.
I think, as a choreographer and an action designer, you're constantly giving your characters problems to overcome. That's what makes it fun for choreography. But it also makes it fun for the audience to see them solve those puzzles and how they are as a human being.
I just want to be a storyteller, and I think the way to do that is by your lyrics, by your visuals, by your choreography, by your dance. It's imperative as an artist.
In Hong Kong, particularly, we craft this art for decades. The action choreographer actually is the action director. He takes over and he choreographs with - by himself or with his team, and place the camera where he feels cinematic effect to bring out that choreography.
Choreography is writing on your feet.
I said, 'I'll give myself two years. If I can't support myself as an actress within two years, then I'll go back to choreography.'
I couldn't pick up a sword and go fight anyone, let me put it that way. It's choreography and it's acting. The best sword fights you see look amazing, but it's the acting that sells it more than anything.
To make it more familiar to me, I ended up treating my swordplay scenes like choreography. So it was, 'One and two and three and four and five, and turn and step and down and up and lunge.'
There is a clearing for new creative thought in choreography. I don't feel intimidated; there is a lot I can do that is new or innovative or different.
When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.
Choreography is something that I am always going to take up, and it will be on the forefront.
One of the first things I created was music for the Paris opera's ballet troupe. That was the first time that electronic music was played at the opera. I really like the relationship between the music and the choreography.
I try and create choreography that's in conversation with the music that the audience is hearing.
My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.
My mom is actually a former prima ballerina, and all the women in my family are associated either with dance or choreography or acting, so I'm very lucky in a way because I grew up in a family of artists. I've been dancing since I was a little kid.
I'll never forget the dance number that I shot with Anushka. The choreography involved a lot of intricate dance moves. I'm at least 7 inches shorter than Anushka, so I had to wear the highest heels I've ever worn in my life; throughout the song, I even injured my knee a couple of times.
