|
24 SOLAR TERMS
Performance Garage's 2022-2023 DanceVisions Resident Artist, Weiwei Ma and her dancers premier 24 Solar Terms.
Weiwei Ma’s artistic practice, and goals of embracing traditional Chinese culture and exploring Eastern and Western art collisions and integrations impels her upcoming work 24 Solar Terms.
“The goal of my work,” says Weiwei, “is not simply to impose American contemporary dance on Chinese bodies or vice versa, but to find a way to balance the technical and the artistic through my personal experiences and embody artistic values in my work. I combine traditional culture, contemporary views, traditional aesthetics, and contemporary bodies on the stage. Nowadays, choreography is not only about unique movement vocabularies and superb dancers. The alchemy involves aesthetics, drama, technology, physics, spirit, and culture. I’d like to make my piece go beyond physical boundaries to become a way of conveying my artistic philosophy.”
The title, 24 Solar Terms, refers to the Chinese solar calendar and corresponds to natural phenomena - seasonal changes - that cycle and change throughout the year. The system, created 2,800 years ago by the Chinese Empire to establish a time system and agricultural guide, was subsequently handed down from generation to generation and has become a timeframe used to underpin the daily routines of people’s lives.
|
