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Natasha Rogai

Tim Yip Kam-tim is a Renaissance man.
He is best known as a designer of costumes and sets for both screen and stage, but he is also a painter, photographer, fashion designer and writer.
His numerous awards include a best art direction Oscar and a best costume design BAFTA for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the film that put Chinese martial arts epics on the international map and helped Yip become one of the world’s most sought-after art directors.
The Post sat down with him at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre during a break between costume fittings for a new production of The Butterfly Lovers, which he has designed for the Hong Kong Ballet (HKB), before its October 18 premiere.

A small, neat figure dressed with quiet style, Yip is softly spoken with an endearing habit of chuckling frequently. There is nothing Hollywood about him – the closest he comes to celebrity behaviour is when he politely asks for a glass of sparkling water “to keep the energy up”.
Dance has featured prominently in his career. He has worked with the likes of the Cloud Gate Theatre in Taiwan; top Hong Kong choreographer Helen Lai; and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the winner of two Laurence Olivier Awards. In recent years, he has also established a regular partnership with Akram Khan, founder of the Akram Kham Company in the UK.
Designing costumes for dance presents special challenges as they must move with the body and enhance the movement, not obscure it, he says.
Yip is fascinated by different genres of dance, how they relate to different cultures and how the concentration of energy varies.
“When we know how the energy flows, we know where to put the fixed point and the floating point, so you can make it very beautiful … We have to know how people move, why they move like that, but what’s really important is how the energy flows, what the culture is about,” he says.
Septime Webre, artistic director of Hong Kong Ballet, first worked with Yip in 2019, when Yip designed a new production of Webre’s The Great Gatsby. The production won the Hong Kong Dance Award for outstanding costume design.
When The Butterfly Lovers came up, Webre immediately thought of Yip.
“Tim’s knowledge of classical Chinese design is definitive, but he filters it through a contemporary lens, distilling it to its essence …
“Tim is an artist of the moment, with a great understanding of how to evoke our cultural past in fresh new ways.”

So what made Yip agree to do The Butterfly Lovers, a story that centres on a tragic romance and is over a thousand years old?
It is because it has contemporary value, he says. Other classic Chinese stories, such as Dream of the Red Chamber, are very difficult to translate for a modern audience. But The Butterfly Lovers, in which the main female character, Zhu Yingtai, cross-dresses as a male to attend school, where she falls in love with classmate Liang Shanbo, is “very modern” in its portrayal of gender fluidity and class relations, Yip says.
“There are so many things in it that are important now!”
The plight of the star-crossed lovers continues to resonate in a world where ordinary people feel they have no power to change things, he adds. “Like us today, they have no choice.”
The music is another draw.
Parts of The Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, composed in 1959 by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, will be incorporated into the ballet’s score. As one of the most famous of all Chinese orchestral works, it represents a special moment of sharing and exchange between Chinese culture and Western music, Yip says.
“That sharing heightens the emotion and the music is really moving, really powerful.”
Yip’s costumes aim to combine the Chinese essence of the story with the needs of ballet.
He points out that Chinese clothes did not show people’s legs until the 20th century, so an approach that is too authentic would hide the beauty of ballet.
Just as the choreography by HKB’s choreographer-in-residence Ricky Hu Songwei and his wife Mai Jingwen – who are creating the ballet together – combine ballet and Chinese dance, so too will the costumes, Yip says.
I don’t really want to do me, me, me, me all the time. I don’t feel interested in that. I’m interested in gathering energy because I’ve done so many things that were me, me, me, me
Tim Yip
And then there is the set. Yip’s complex design employs 12 moving screens and digital projections and will evoke the story without being too linear. While the audience will know the story well, Yip says it still leaves room for a relatively abstract and imaginative artistic treatment.
This echoes Hu and Mai’s approach. When Webre proposed doing a full-length version of The Butterfly Lovers, Hu was not that keen.
“At first we didn’t want to do it as our style is more abstract, not conventional narrative,” Hu says. However, after studying the work in-depth, the couple felt it was good material for ballet.
“The story is simple, it’s beautiful and it’s a tragedy – we loved everything about it,” Hu says.
Yip came on board in the summer of 2023. When Hu and Mai first showed him the script, they were nervous about the reaction from such a famous designer.
In fact, the working relationship has been “super easy”, Hu says. “He always listens to what we are saying. After just a few days, he came up with the designs, based on our ideas.”
It has been a fully collaborative process, with frequent meetings and three-hour Zoom sessions. Yip always answers their questions immediately, helps them to filter their ideas and “gives them more possibilities”, Hu and Mai say.
“Whatever we suggest, he does his best to get it done,” Mai says. Hu adds that he is “really respectful” even to a comparatively young choreographer like him.

Yip modestly describes himself as a piece of white paper. The content of his work often comes not from him, he says, but from his reaction to others.
For example, one of his coming projects is a fashion show in London showcasing young designers.
“I don’t really want to do me, me, me, me all the time. I don’t feel interested in that. I’m interested in gathering energy because I’ve done so many things that were me, me, me, me.”
He adds, with that infectious chuckle: “But sometimes, for some projects, I will feel me, me, me again.”
“The Butterfly Lovers”, Hong Kong Ballet, Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, October 18-20 and 26-27; and at the Grand Auditorium, Macao Cultural Centre, November 9-10.


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Tim Yip, set and costume designer for Hong Kong Ballet’s The Butterfly Lovers, at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on September 11, 2024. The Oscar-winning art director, who worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, says he is fascinated by different genres of dance. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Yip says there are many issues in the classic Chinese story The Butterfly Lovers that are important today. Photo: Jonathan Wong

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Hong Kong Ballet’s choreographer-in-residence Ricky Hu Songwei. Photo: Edmond So

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Arts & Culture

Oscar-winner Tim Yip talks about designing the set and costumes for Hong Kong Ballet’s The Butterfly Lovers and his fascination with dance


Oscar-winner Tim Yip talks about designing the set and costumes for Hong Kong Ballet’s The Butterfly Lovers and his fascination with dance.


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