Shen Wei Dance Arts: Re-

On Friday I went to see a performance by award-winning Chinese-American choreographer Shen Wei at the Kwai Tsing Theatre. I came expecting much, but left restless and somewhat pensive.

Stylistically, the Shen Wei dancers are virtuosic. They possess a quality of lightness in their movement that I have not seen anywhere else. The first piece, Re- I, inspired by Shen Wei's travels in Tibet, was pure praire wind. I was completely astounded by the fact that I could not locate the impulse for their movement -- and I was in the front row, so I really got to experience the their movement up, close and personal.

Unfortunately, after a while, the flowing quality got a but hypnotic. It was a bit like watching clouds…. you cannot help but space out. Solos, group formations, all variations on the same erring organic flow.

Throughout the evening there was little opposition or conflict, whether on the level of movement, choreography, or in the interaction with music/video. This absence of conflict is a rather odd assumption for a theatrical performance and contemporary dance. It definitely is a 180 degrees difference from my Polish contemporary dance training with Jacek Luminski. Luminski’s movement philosophy is based on the oppositional forces and conflicting impulses from different parts of the body. The hand may turn the body in one direction, the head spiral in another, only to be overcome by a sudden pull of the tail-bone. The spine is always in dialectic conversation, reflecting a struggle of human beings as they aspire to heaven, but must adhere to the pull of the earth.

Whereas in Shen Wei’s choreography, the dancers mask this struggle. They make very demanding movements seem effortless. Like ballet, they convey an illusion of grace. Instead of showcasing the humanity of his dancers, the ensemble seems otherworldy. They might as well be natural phenomenom - wind, water, tree-trunks…

However, this anonymity becomes problematic when Shen Wei attempts to tackle more human feelings and social phenomenom in his work. For example, in the second piece (Re- III) he chose to address “the powerful contrast between an Eastern concept of social unity, dependence and sharing, and the dominance of individuality in the West.”

There are numerous strong images, but unfortunately they soon get washed over. For example, there is a sequence where the group walks in time to the beat (reminiscent of marching), and an individual dancer within the group who does something different (e.g., rolling, dancing, etc). However, the variations the individual plays must adherent to the overall pace of the steady march of the larger group, evoking associations of censorship or the difficulty of individual expression in a modern world.

This is such a powerful proposal, but unfortunately, Shen Wei does not follow it through. What if, for example, the dancer in the middle was expressed something truly individual, and came up with movement that contrasted the movement qualities given to her by the choreographer? What if the friction proposed between the individual and group was taken to its logical conclusion?

Would she get run over by the group? Be left behind? At its current state, the material remains very safe and politically correct. Shen Wei merely presents “contrast”, but seems eager to avoid any conflict.

Which brings me back, really, to question the purpose of performance and the function of dance. Is it enough for a dance to be beautiful? Must it “confront” the audience? For a long time in Chinese history, the function of performative dance was to please the emperor. The function was to be visually pleasing, and certainly not to ruffle any status quo. In this sense, Shen Wei’s dance is very Chinese.

Actually, when I create, I actually think less about “confronting” the audience, and more about the degree of thoroughness and integrity of the exploration. And to this goal, I know that I need to walk the talk. I accept, for example, when Ah Tung came up to me at the end of the show, shook me and said, “You didn’t go far enough with Concrete Jungle Berzerk! – if you are going to talk about the repetition of office routine, I want to see you repeat the routine sequence endlessly it until the audience is ready to scream.” Mmm. Easy to criticise, harder to do.

Finally, Shen Wei’s work provoked me to think about the relationship between the choreographer and his or her dancers. There actually is something rather violent for me to see such a large ensemble of dancers all monolithically possessing the same quality. Male, female, tall, short -- they all dance with the same lightness. Indeed, when people responded to Hallelujah or Berzerk! they talked about how we were able to bring forth the individuality of each performer. I took this to be a compliment.

Re- (I, II, III) by Shen Wei Dance Arts was performed on 6-7/11/09 at Kwai Tsing Theatre.