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August 19, 2004
• Shen Wei: Overcoming adversity Shen Wei: Overcoming adversity Stockbridge Have I practiced Shen Wei today? This is how I motivate myself to go Nike and just do it, now that I've interviewed Wei, the man from China whose Dance Arts Company appears on the main stage next week at Jacob’s Pillow. Wei is the choreographer New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff dubs "modern dance's most original new talent," and this troupe his laboratory. Or, he might prefer the term, "garden." On these dancers, he grows his ideas and experiments with new hybrids. In a recent telephone interview, he spoke of his creativity in that vein. Asked how he crafts a new work, he said, "Each one different. Like," he hesitates, "like you need to grow tomato. You ask what put in dirt, what needs weather. It is from inside out. You start at beginning with seed and discover you can't grow a banana on a tomato." I reached him on his cellphone. But he suggested I call him at his office, where the reception will be better. Okay, I say. At a time when everyone in New York, and maybe America, is still jumpy from 9/11 and on red alert yet again, given the upcoming Republican Convention, Chinese immigrant Wei -- overworked, underpaid, not eligible for foodstamps, and definitely iffy with English, talks about touring his Company from its New York City headquarters! Is it a standing company? Yes. Have they attracted major funding? No. But your dancers show up every day to work with you? Yes. P.S. The gigs booked this summer include the internationally renowned American Dance Festival and Jacob's Pillow. This is why America is a great place (if we could just get over ourselves).
Why America is not a great place is that young Shen found his way in this country despite five extremely difficult, lonely years of hardship. Wei had come to New York on a manic pilgrimage of acquisition, to juice up Western culture as fast as was humanly possible. Since his earliest years, his life had been strictly regimented through training and performing in traditional Chinese Opera -- his family's business in Xianying. At 9, he was sent to Hunan to study an even older, more esoteric Opera tradition, and also, calligraphy, which, in the Asian interpretation is training in "the slow brush stroke" -- akin to tai chi, a matter of breath, spirit, and energy. Calligraphy in China is no other than the conscious gathering of mind, heart and soul for the task at hand. It would serve young Wei well in his life. But suddenly, everything changed for Wei and China, with the collapse of the Cultural Revolution. As he came of age, the doors to the West opened, and everything old was new again. Wei was on fire. A burgeoning painter by now, he was galvanized by exposure to Degas, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, DuChamps, the music of Saint Saens and Stravinsky. And then, he took his first Western dance class and it permanently altered his path. By the time he'd determined to expand his artistic goals in New York in his late 20s, he’d built a sturdy technique and choreography portfolio as a founding member of Guangdong, the first modern dance company in China. He spoke no English, but cobbled communication together. How did he learn enough to find jobs, make a living, I asked. "I opened myself to trying," he says. "I learn to listen, absorb everything. I think you just go for it." Nonetheless, going for it took its toll, and more than five years of chasing part-time dance opportunities with the Martha Clarke and other companies, random chances at guest choreography and even teaching here and there, he became severely stressed to near-starvation. He landed in a hospital bed, listening to a doctor telling him he had a heart ailment that would require surgery. And, what about it, what might not have been available to him in China, he could get here. Yes. Our embarrassing, exasperating, amazing America. Starve on the streets and then, check into the ER with no money or credentials, and get first-rate treatment, thanks to regulations that require some hospitals to provide care to indigents. This was about 1999. But, good for America. (These policies are good for America.) Because, young Shen Wei woke from anesthesia and rethought himself. There, in his hospital bed, he defined his artistry as the most meaningful thing he could be in this world. There, in recovery, he sketched out a radical new work, "Folding," which ultimately became what qualifies as an international "hit." There, he discovered inspiration for the surprising, inventive, daring and confident choreographer he has become at 35. How did that happen? Of course, it must have been the close call, the fear of dying, a spiritual reckoning. That's what I’m thinking. But, Wei’s eye was simply on what was unfinished. He’s been pulled up untimely by the roots to see how he was growing, so to speak. He reached inside and found "qi." "I'd been confused by everything," he says, “trying to absorb and take everything in.” As he recovered energy and strength in his body, it spurred his confidence. His imagination took hold. And, it was the year 2000, a new century, he laughs. That meant something powerful, too. Outside affirmation did not come immediately in the aftermath. In the face of that, he chose retreat to China, and set "Folding" first, on Guangdong. Tour bookings for the Company in Europe led to requests from a number of dance companies and artists for Wei's repertoire, and an invitation to the American Dance Festival, based in Raleigh, N.C. More invitations followed: Hollins College in Virginia, State University of New York in Purchase (a school and performing arts program very much integrated with the professional dance community), Cornell University, Connecticut College; and, choreography commissions from Alvin Ailey II and the Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan. These engagements supplied the necessary bodies with which to explore his ideas. Every piece he developed -- Beach, a brand new process of discovery -- proved him a choreographer without peer. He is one of a kind. Drawing from his painting and calligraphy experience as well as dance, Wei has established a brand -- what is described by critics as "action painting." He paints huge canvas backdrops and floor cloths, against which the dancers perform an entirely fresh vernacular, Wei's own pursuit of a concept -- the act of folding, for example, or the creation of that tomato. Sometimes his dancers serve as human paintbrushes, splashed with paint on their backs or on mittens, and leaving their movement as a graphic print. Lighting and points of color, fiery red hair on a single dancer, for example, confer an almost cinematic effect. But movement is Wei’s real triumph -- exceptional fluidity and acrobatic punctuation, evocative spectacle that seems heavily influenced by his childhood evolution in Chinese Opera. With four major works in his repertory now, from a new "Rite of Spring," to three abstract beauties, Wei arrives at the Pillow next week on a roll, with triumphant accolades from stunning performances in New York and Raleigh, N.C. Predictably, he explains his success in simple terms. "I think when you suddenly understand your own work, your own voice," he says, "things open, your work becomes more individual and stronger. You are more clear. People understand and become interested in what you are trying to say." He's someone to see if, for nothing else, the same charge the Olympics give: a man who has gone for it flat out from earliest childhood. "Believe it, and you can," as one TV ad has it. And, if you ever wonder what you're doing on this planet, practice Shen Wei. Get up and be who you are to the fullest. |
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