The Inquisition: Tao Ye, choreographer
The Chinese choreographer, of TAO Dance Theatre, seeks to explore the body and express its values
48 HOURS: When you set up your company TAO Dance Theatre in 2008, you were only 22. What was going through your mind then?
TAO YE: I might have been 22, but I wasn’t exactly a young person just entering society.
I already had experience with three dance companies at that point. I knew a lot about the state of modern dance, and I attempted to find a way forward in that environment. When I started the company, I didn’t worry too much, or doubt myself. I just went in the direction that I wanted to take. It may be more difficult to do that in today’s environment, though.
Your company will be performing the pieces 4 and 5 at the New Vision Arts Festival on October 31and November 1. The dancers in 4 move in a fixed formation without ever touching each other, but those in 5 appear to be stuck together. What’s behind this conceptual rigidity?
That’s the philosophy behind my Number series. For every piece, I look for a starting point and then develop it. I try to take it to its extreme. I don’t add more ideas, and I expand the point in a very pure process, during which I cut out more and more elements. This could be the opposite of how the more popular methods of choreography operate today.
You’re using a quartet of dancers for 4, five dancers for the piece 5, and six for 6. Will you keep choreographing in this numeric way?
I have no plans to change this idea at the moment. There are a lot of aspects about the body that we still want to explore.
It’s not common practice in modern dance to title works with numbers. Has anyone called it pretentious?