Tastemaker: Choreographer Shen Wei
Choreographer Shen Wei brings a performance right into the audience's face, writes Janice Leung
New York-based Chinese choreographer Shen Wei has made his name on the international dance scene with his lyrical, visually alluring contemporary creations infused with Eastern sensibilities. You have seen his choreography before: one of his epic works, where dancers writhed to create ink paintings on a spectacular scroll-floor at the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, reached more than one billion viewers worldwide.
Body painting is a recurring motif in Shen's repertoire and will appear again this week in his dance company's third Hong Kong visit. But this time, the choreographer has shifted away from his signature dreamlike aesthetics towards a creative direction that reflects today's cosmopolitan society, where digital media and the internet play an integral role. "Digital culture is part of our lives. No matter if you like it or not, that's what the reality is," he says.
Closing this year's New Vision Arts Festival at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the double-bill from Shen Wei Dance Arts comprises a modified version of , originally commissioned by the American Dance Festival last year. The piece, about "the limitation in time and space", uses multimedia - video projections and animation - to relate to our information age.
Despite the digital elements, Shen assures that it still is a live performance full of physical energy: "I use technology also to emphasise movement, to open new kinds of communications between art and the audience." His dancers will wear iPhones to capture and project other dancers' movement in real time.
Like many of Shen's works, is abstract; there is no story. "It's not set up for one line, one spot, one focus … It's like our time in reality. We see everything happening simultaneously; we choose what we want to focus on. I want the audience to be more engaged, rather than just sit there and say: show me what you have."
The second half of the double-bill, , requires an even more active audience: the dancers abandon the stage altogether to perform in the Cultural Centre foyer, a location that's not made for large-scale performances. During the 30-minute work, 17 dancers will scatter around the centre's ground floor, and the audience will watch them perform from different angles: one may view the entire environment from the upper levels, or walk into the performance area to inspect how the dancers undulate and contort their muscles.
"That gives us a different kind of connection with the performers. We can really feel the energy around us - something we miss when we sit before a big stage, where we can't really see the movement in detail but only big pictures," Shen says.
Over the past two years, Shen has taken his choreography out of the theatrical setting, to museums (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) and to city landmarks in New York, dancing around Wall Street, Times Square, Union Square and other places.
Both pieces to be staged in Hong Kong mirror today's internet culture where people actively search for information. "Like you're put in a situation where you are led by your senses to choose what you want to see," says Shen, who's responsible for the concept, choreography, lighting, costume, animation design and video of the productions.
The versatile 44-year-old learned to multitask as he was a child. Born in Hunan province, Shen was raised in an artistic family: his father is a calligrapher and an opera director. He first picked up traditional Chinese painting, and then, at the age of nine, began to study Xiang opera at a boarding school, every day from 5.30am to 8pm, for six and a half years.
"In opera, you sing, you act, you dance, you do everything." The choreographer says boarding school was tough but the multidisciplinary nature of the ancient art form also enabled him to develop a holistic approach to the theatre.
Then came the 1980s, an era that fascinated Shen as Western contemporary art started to enter the mainland: "It's okay to do traditional arts, but as a teenager, I wanted to do something with our time, our senses, our lives … not just copying what's already been done many times before."
Shen turned to modern dance in 1989 and became a founding member of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company - the first of its kind on the mainland. In 1995, the young choreographer received a scholarship from the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab, which allowed him to spend three months in New York. The city's vibrancy and huge differences - artistically, socially and economically - from his homeland "inspired and challenged" him.
Did he dream about success, then, at 27? "No! I never even thought I could survive in New York," Shen says, recounting the hard times he had when he first arrived in the centre of the art world - he was alone, penniless and didn't speak English at all. To stay behind he had to start from scratch, performing as a dancer and selling his paintings for five years.
In 2000, the artist set up his dance company; he has since received prestigious prizes including the Nijinsky Award for Emerging Choreographer (2004) and the MacArthur Fellowship (2007).
"It's my passion that has driven me. I love art, both performing and visual arts. I go to museums and galleries. I try to digest as much as I can," he says.
Nowadays, the voracious learner and his choreography are most often described as "interdisciplinary" and "cross-cultural". "All I'm trying to do in my works is to reflect my own experiences … In the 1980s and '90s, China changed, so I had the chance to have both cultures. Before then, there was no way," Shen says. "I'm just a product of our time."
Limited States & A World Premiere Work
