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Tao Dance Theater: Weight X3&9

Date: Nov 24-25 - 7:30 pm

Venue: Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center

A rising star of contemporary dance in China, choreographer Tao Ye with his Tao Dance Theater has successfully drawn the attention of the globe. He is well known for seeking possibilities of the body to its limits as well as developing a dance style of formally rigorous, reduced abstractions that are nonetheless open to free association by the audience. In six, the cast is lined up near the back, their arms held taut, hands gathering up folds of their long, black skirts. Most of the choreographic action is concentrated on the tilting, circling, rippling action of their upper bodies. But in the hazy, flickering light that plays over them, they shape-shift into other worlds: at moments a chain-gang of workers - a human machine; at others a line of trees swaying in wind or the thick ropey current of a swollen river. Nine will present a scene that summarizes, but is nonetheless richer than the enclosed and completed "Circular Movement System". The connection between moving bodies will be extracted from this system, then reconfigured to form the self-identifiable choreographic vocabularies that constitute the movements of the nine dancers in nine.