Profile | Hong Kong ballet star Tirion Law’s rise to principal dancer at National Ballet of Canada
- Tirion Law talks about her surprise promotion and her upcoming performance in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Ballet Group’s 60th anniversary
“A sensitive artist with a beautiful technique and an innate sense of storytelling … I’d like to announce the newest principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada: Miss Tirion Law.”
This announcement on June 9, 2024, by the ballet’s artistic director Hope Muir, was made on stage after Law’s debut as Kitri in Don Quixote. It came as a complete surprise to the Hong Kong-born dancer.
“My brain was empty and I didn’t really know what to do,” the 28-year-old recalls during an interview while on holiday in Hong Kong. “All I can remember is thinking I should go forward and bow.”
Law is one of a number of ethnic Chinese principal dancers making an impact at major Western ballet companies, but the only one who was born in Hong Kong (though Chan Chunwai, principal dancer at the New York City Ballet since 2022, also spent part of his formative years in the city).
The promotion was unexpected since at the National Ballet of Canada, only promotions to principal – the top tier – are announced on stage. Dancers normally move up the ranks one step at a time, and at the time Law was second soloist, two ranks below the top.
“I never thought they would skip a stage and promote me to principal,” she says, adding that becoming a principal dancer was always “a dream and a goal”.
