Shen Wei
Widely recognized for his distinct vision of an intercultural and interdisciplinary mode of movement-based performance, Shen Wei creates original works that employ an assortment of media elements, including dance, painting, sound, sculpture, theater and video.
For each new work he choreographs, Shen Wei typically designs all the visual elements including the sets, costumes and make-up, film projection, and lighting as well.
In July 2008, he choreographed a fashion show at Paris Haute Couture for the label WUYONG, by the Chinese designer Ma Ke.
[13] Following China's reestablishment of diplomatic and economic ties to the West in the early 1980s, Shen Wei began to study western classic oil painting techniques and styles of artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Paul Cézanne, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
In 1994 he created his one-man, experimental multi-media show "Small Room", which toured in Guangzhou, Beijing, and Hong Kong, and which catapulted him into the public eye.
He also toured his one-man show "Small Room" at The Palace Theater in London, Asia Society in New York City, and Hollins University in Virginia.
After 5 years of living in New York, Shen Wei began to develop a style of movement that has been described as "enigmatic" and "dream-like", and which is exemplified by "Folding" (2000),[17][18] "Near The Terrace, Part I & II" (2000–2001)[19] "Behind Resonance" (2001).
[20] According to Anna Kisselgoff, in these early pieces, the surrealist aesthetic emerges as a result of a disruption in what Shen Wei calls, "natural elements," such as regular breathing cycles, which affects the quality of movement in dancers.
[21] Folding and Near the Terrace have also been described as "kinetic tableus,";[22] the entire dance space characterized by swathes of color and sculptural movement.
The work explores "internal and external body movements, as well as energy transitions," and is a synthesis of music, dance, painting, and sculpture.
Amid this period of travel, Shen Wei produced Second Visit of the Empress, a hybrid creation that overtly fuses traditional Chinese Opera and Theater with Western modern dance.
[29] The opera melds polarities, placing narrative and abstractive, traditional and contemporary, as well as Eastern and Western expressions within a single performance space.
Shen Wei is the director and choreographer of the opening segment "Scroll" at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Ceremony, which references his 2004 work "Connect Transfer".
Since 2010, he has increasingly implemented other media forms in his work, a decision that represents Shen Wei's impression of today's technology-saturated society as well as what art in the future may look like.
[34] Prior to this, Shen Wei created a site-specific response piece to Ernesto Neto's installation, Anthropodino, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.
Commissioned by the Museum, Still Moving is, according to Shen Wei, about "creating a dialogue between the dancers and the gallery's sculptures, between past and present, between immobility and movement."
The piece consists of three parts, Restaging: Near the Terrace, Transition, and Internal External #1, all contained within the Charles Engelhard Court.
Commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory, the immersive, site-specific piece reconfigures traditional performer-audience relations so that audience members move and survey dance within the multimedia performance space.
Created for and commissioned by Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, the production featured an orchestra of 100, a 100-member chorus, and 47 dancers.
Shen Wei was also commissioned to choreograph a new work for the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring premiere.
In June 2014, Shen Wei exhibited part of a new series of paintings, Untitled, at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas.
This exhibition allowed viewers to see Shen Wei's work in both mediums and draw connections between his acute sensibilities.
For those who have seen his earlier work, the Movements series, which debuted in Hong Kong ten years prior, an obvious development can be depicted through his technique and approach.
[37] In an interview with Zinta Lundborg of Bloomberg (2011), Shen Wei stated, "Dancers should show expression through their body movement.
His "Natural Body Development" technique takes a holistic approach to dance, integrating breath-work with proprioception, visual focus, weight, and gravity.
In his choreographic process, Shen Wei also employs structured improvisation, allowing dancers to use their intuitions to create novel movement assemblages.
