Published on Aug 16, 2016

Rating:

Genre: NCPA

Dates: November 12-13, 2016

Venue: Opera House of NCPA

Prices: 80, 120, 240, 300, 350, 400, 580

Features: One of the premier international dance companies, worldwide acclaimed Shen Wei Dance Arts will presents the "Folding & Map" at Opera House of NCPA in Beijing from November 12nd-13rd during the NCPA Dance Festival 2016.

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Folding was commissioned by the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and Shen Wei recreated the work for his own company in 2002. The work conjures-up a dream-like, even surreal, world that is at once ancient and timeless. Dancers glide onto the stage space and amass as though suddenly called to partake in an ancient ritual, familiar and yet unknown. A downstage pendulum, barely moving, marks the slow unraveling of time. The costumes (conical headdresses and long red and black robes), white makeup, and glowing white floor, heighten the dance’s sense of mystery and ritual. The work’s large backdrop, painted by Shen Wei, is after an 18th-century Chinese watercolor by Bada Shanren.

Vigorous and witty, Map reveals another side of Shen Wei’s imagination. Set to selections from Steve Reich’s The Desert Music, dancers rotate, bounce, swivel, and swirl with a palpable kinetic joy. Alternating between metronomic precision and silky fluidity, the dancers converge and scatter as though caught up in a gust of wind, until in the climax, they surge and swoop as one.

Shen Wei -- Artistic Director of Shen Wei Dance Arts
Hailed as “one of the great artists of our time” (The Washington Times), choreographer, painter, and director Shen Wei has received such distinctions as the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the U.S. Artists Fellow Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Australia’s Helpmann Award, the Nijinsky Emerging Choreographer Award, and the Algur H. Meadows Prize.

Born in Hunan, China, Shen Wei was trained in Chinese opera performance, traditional Chinese ink painting and calligraphy in his youth, and went on to study western oil painting and modern dance. In 1991, Shen Wei became a founding member of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the first modern dance company in China. Four years later, Shen Wei received a fellowship at Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab and moved to the United States. In 2000 he founded Shen Wei Dance Arts in New York City.

Shen Wei has been invited by the Lincoln Center Festival 5 times, and recently completed a five-year residency at the Kennedy Center. His dance company has toured his work to over 40 countries and 140 cities around the world. In 2008 he was invited to be the lead choreographer for the Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Major commissions include: the Lincoln Center Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Park Avenue Armory, Het Muziektheater, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Dutch National Ballet, the Rome Opera House, Teatro di San Carlo in Naples and 14 times by the American Dance Festval.

Shen Wei Dance Arts Company
One of the premier international dance companies, Shen Wei Dance Arts has won worldwide acclaim for “amassing a body of works so strikingly original they defy categorization” (The Boston Globe). The dances Shen Wei makes for his Company draw on influences as varied as traditional Chinese culture and arts, European Surrealism, American high modernism, and the ritual power of ancient drama. Celebrated for its “gorgeous visual imagery” (The London Times), the Company’s dances reflect the compositional rigor of Shen Wei the visual artist—incorporating striking design and imaginative use of space into mesmerizing kinetic stagescapes. The Company’s dancers have been hailed as, “a breed apart: lissome, precise, expressive—and totally at one with Shen Wei’s choreographic vision” (The Herald, Scotland).

Since its founding in 2000, Shen Wei Dance Arts has performed in 138 cities, in 31 countries, on 5 continents and has appeared at prestigious festivals and venues worldwide, including the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, the Los Angeles Music Center, Venice Biennale, Sadler’s Wells, the Barbican Centre, Het Muziektheater, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Berliner Festspiele, the Sydney Festival, and annual performances at the American Dance Festival. In the U.S., Shen Wei Dance Arts has performed in 25 of the 50 states, gave the first dance performances at Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and recently completed a unique 5-year performance residency at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Tickets for Shen Wei Dance Arts Company Folding & Map are Available now!