Beijing Dance Forward Festival

For arts to take hold, amateurs have to play their part; this means doctors joining chamber groups, artists selling street sketches and office workers doing modern dance. That’s why the Beijing Dance Forward Festival is so important. This will be the fourth annual week-long dance event run by BeijingDance/LDTX. While the first and third highlighted international companies, alternate years are for enthusiastic locals.

‘Modern dance in China is a new way of thinking and concept of living, [where] people express themselves freely with their bodies,’ says LDTX artistic director Willy Tsao. ‘Forward provides an open platform for them to try their creation without any value judgment. It exemplifies the new philosophy in 21st-century Chinese modern dance.’

 

While most students, recent graduates or dancers with day jobs have professional training, Forward welcomes anyone who ‘dares to create’. Partnered with Star Theater, the festival features over 60 works by 23 groups from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Here’s some highlights to look out for...

 

 

Being trained in ballet, Chinese classical, folk and modern dance, BJDA attendees have exemplary technique, giving student choreographers a broad palette on which to work. Choreography is still a nascent discipline, but head teacher Ma Nan explains that students train in ‘creativity and imagination, which will make them build a diverse industry in China, [and] communicate with dancers all over the world.’ Unfortunately, the four pieces use similar – if not identical – music, but everyone has to start somewhere; since China’s choreographic future is coming from BJDA, this is well worth a look.

 

 

Focus artistic director Zhang Xiaoxiong provides a showcase for the company’s top six 21-year old choreographers (pictured), and points out Tu Liyuan and Xu Chengwei as ones to watch. ‘Their works reflect innovation, flair and great conceptualisation, from the intricate dance moves to the overall stage performance,’ he says.

 

Focus also brings a post-festival show of three classics on Saturday 21: Luo Manfei’s Wu Ban Zou (1997) about unrequited love, Zhang’s own Ai Ge (Sorrowful Song), and perhaps most interesting, Xing Liang’s Wu Ti, which features 20 minutes of unrestricted improvisation from the Focus dancers. ‘It’s an attentionseizing performance,’ says Zhang. ‘[It has] an intimidating momentum.’

 

 

Lian Guodong makes ‘free dance’ the bulk of his work. As a Beijing high school student, he was ‘instantly captivated’ watching a dance company perform and had enough natural talent to bag himself a spot in the group, even with no prior training. He continued ‘doing my own stuff’ in university, but it wasn’t until after graduation that he got professional training. But his lack of formal instruction proved to be liberating, allowing him to blend structured choreography with improvisation.

 

Asked about the influence of free dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Rudolph Laban, he demurs: ‘Everyone is different. [That’s how] things remain stimulating, full of individuality and freedom.’

 

 

Two companies that work together, play together and may represent the best of China’s independent dance scene. Hailing from Guangxi, both are made up of teachers, students, civil servants and other non-arts professionals who rehearse every weekend at a local school. Born of a mutual love for dance, the two have blended their distinct styles and cooperate regularly; they seek to find ‘creative passion and simple happiness [amid] fatigued living and tired bodies.’

 

Willy Tsao agrees. ‘The two teams maintain their independent creativity, but also show complete and harmonious collaboration,’ he says. ‘That’s rare. Guangxi is likely to become China’s third modern dance centre after Beijing and Guangzhou.’