Out of the Box
City Contemporary Dance Company
Kwai Tsing Theatre
Reviewed: June 27
This new work choreographed by Xing Liang is as much a philosophical statement of what Xing believes dance should be as dance in itself. Xing has drawn inspiration from Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky together with Gao Xingjian's book Without Isms. He has come up with the view that dance should be completely abstract and consist of pure movement, divorced from any trace of narrative, form or personality.
This concept is far from new and has been propounded many times by contemporary dance theorists. Dance does not need to be narrative, but over-insistence on movement for the sake of movement can lead to an exercise in sterility if dancers are reduced to blank-faced automatons and choreography to geometry.