Shen Wei Dance Arts

Shen Wei Dance Arts is founded upon the fusion of art forms, displaying an innovative blend of traditional Chinese opera, painting, dance and music with Western performance arts such as modern dance. It is in the top tier of dance ensembles worldwide.

Limited States, the newest work by Shen Wei, is a marriage of film and choreography. Dancers blend seamlessly with video, shadow, paint and lighting. The distraction of technology is Shen Wei's new focus and he attacks it, beautifully. There is tour support for presenters of Limited States in the 2012-13 season, thanks to the National Dance Project of New England Foundation for the Arts.

The work premiered at American Dance Festival in July 2011 and was labeled a remarkable blending of film, shadow, paint and lighting. Denise Cerniglia declared in Triangle Arts & Entertainment, Attention to detail and creative genius put this dance in a category of its own and described the dancers as moving like Rodin sculptures that have come to life. Critics had particular praise for soloist Sara Procopio, who painted herself with paints from hidden receptacles, evoking notions of savage rites. (Roy C. Dicks, News-Observer).

From September 1-3, Shen Wei Dance Arts performed Re- (I,II,III)/ Triptych in the Edinburgh Festival at Edinburgh Playhouse. The work is a trilogy that reflects on Tibet, Cambodia and the future of China in three separate "acts" that debuted individually in 2006, 2007 and 2009. The "Re-" in the title refers to the notion of return, reconsideration and renewal. The evening was regarded as a stunning depiction of the chaotic change in East Asia, breathtaking in style, with fluid, fascinating choreography.

On June 6 and 13, 2011, Shen Wei Dance Arts made history in the Metropolitan Museum of Art when it delivered the first performance ever directly inspired by, and conceived for, a particular gallery there. The Charles Engelhard Court is a grand, light-filled, windowed pavilion that provides an entrance to the American Wing. Its marble and bronze figurative works by American sculptures framed an evening named Still Moving, a dance about time, space and energy. Its first half was a slow, dreamy exploration of the beauty of the human form. Its second half used electronic music, speculating on our peculiar moment in digital time and how we feel human connections in our bodies.

From November 29 to December 3, the company will perform a three-part concert to close its year-long creative exploration at Manhattan's Park Avenue Armory. The evening will culminate in a newly commissioned work which will take over the entire Drill Hall and reveal new directions for the troupe. Shen Wei will also revisit two of his most celebrated works: Rite of Spring (2003), a study of deliberate versus reflexive movement set to intricate music by Stravinsky, and Folding (2000), which combines stylized movement with ethereal melodies by John Tavener and traditional Tibetan Buddhist chants.

The Chinese-born choreographer was born during China's Cultural Revolution and immigrated to New York in 1995. His early childhood was spent in a hardscrabble rural village in Hunan. His parents were Chinese opera professionals and he began his artistic training by learning calligraphy and Chinese watercolor painting at age four. At age nine, he was sent to an austere boarding school to acquire the interdisciplinary skills required of Chinese opera. Until age 16, he also studied Western oil painting.

He performed leading roles at the Hunan State Xian Opera Company from 1984 to 1989, the year of Tian'anmen Square, when he entered the Guangdong Dance Academy. Its artistic director, Yang Meiqi, had attended the American Dance Festival in 1986 and, inspired by it, founded the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in 1991, with Shen Wei as a member. Young Shen could not obtain the Chinese government's permission to travel to ADF for the troupe's US debut in 1991, but was approved in 1995 to study at the Nikolais-Louis Dance Lab in NYC. There, his work caught almost immediate international attention, leading to it being presented around Europe and at the Asia Society in New York. In July 2000, he formed Shen Wei Dance Arts with performances of "Near the Terrace" at the American Dance Festival, where his work first took roots on this continent.

By 2008, he and his company were prominent enough to showcase his native country through the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. As the dancers physically became ink brushes, painting black ink on a giant canvas, it reminded those familiar with his work of his central modus operandi. Shen Wei manages bodies with the impulses of a Western painter, often an abstractionist or a surrealist, but a painter nonetheless. He often covers his dancers Butoh-like in white powder, not for the symbolism of Butoh, but for its interaction with other colors in the set and lighting; its atmosphere being part of the artistic vision. The dancers, recruited mainly from ADF, hardly move in some of his dances. His movement technique is significantly one of energy and muscular control, and nuance. He moves bodies as liquid, in ways that Americans have never seen before.

Shen Wei is a 2007 MacArthur "Genius" and United States Artists Fellow. He has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the American Dance Festival's Ben Sommer Fellowship, among others.