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MEETING A
DANCEWEB STUDENT IN VIENNA
By Peter
Stamer
On
contemporary world maps drawn in China, the country can be located where it
sees itself: right in the centre of the globe. To its right side, there are the
two Americas, which gives the notion of Far East an interesting twist; and in
the far West, a tiny continent called Europe can be discovered, on the edge of
the map, at the periphery of the planet. The world appears differently looked
upon from a Chinese perspective. But not for every Chinese. From the point of
view of a young "DanceWebber" from China, Vienna is in the centre of her world – at least for four weeks.
Choreographer
and dancer Nunu Kong (aka Wu Yan Dan) was born in 1982 in the city Wuxi,
Jiangsu province, now living in Shanghai. She attended a special 4-year
contemporary choreography program at the dance academy of Yang Mei Qi, founder
of the Guang Dong Modern Dance Company. The latter is the only officially
recognized and approved modern dance group in China, founded in 1987. Nunu
graduated in 2004 from the Beijing Dance Academy, her major being Contemporary
Dance Choreography. Upon graduating, she relocated to Shanghai to join the Jin
Xing Dance Company as a dancer for one year.
In the
West, Jin Xing somehow got to be known as a fashionable representative of
Chinese contemporary dance; yet the former army officer even became infamous
for the fact that she had changed her sex from male to female. During that
first year in 2005, Nunu together with other independent artists like
playwright Zhang Xian founded the ‘Zuhe Niao' collective in Shanghai. The group
gathers artists from various disciplines in order to grant a wide range of
artistic approaches. If one further takes into consideration that Nunu Kong was
twice invited to attend the young choreographers' festival, organized by and at
CCD workstation in Beijing, one can state that Nunu has collaborated with every
highly regarded and critically acclaimed representative of contemporary dance
in China of this decade. In Beijing, she presented her first piece of
choreography, "Question: Mama," that turned out to be one of the most promising
and conceptually convincing approaches to choreography and contemporary dance
of the festival.
During the
short time as a company dancer that has led her to various festivals in Berlin
or Salzburg as well as already in her beginning career as a choreographer, she
has met a lot of dance professionals from the West. They would travel to
Shanghai or Beijing to teach (like Berlin-based choreographers Rubato), and
from the perspective of a contemporary dancer coming from China, Europe is much
more Western than the United States. Not simply on the Chinese geopolitical
map, but also in terms of cultural exchange: Art as well as contemporary dance
from China has drawn the peak of European attention at the moment. Yet, Nunu is
very well aware of the disbalance between artistic and cultural representation;
for her, artistic "otherness" displayed on stage shall not be taken for cultural
difference, since European organizers and promoters tend to confuse culture
with the work of the artist.
Nunu's
works intrinsically problematize this question of artistic difference that
should not be taken for her "Chinese-ness," even though she knows best about
the impacts her Chinese background plays out on her. One of these cultural
effects she has to deal with is to be seen in difficulties to present her work
in China. Chinese cultural policy prescribes a performance permission for
artists that has to be issued by the local authorities; not to mention a
complete lack of subvention, support, or funds being allocated by Chinese
institutions, since contemporary dance is not considered worthwhile supporting;
it doesn't represent the official cultural policy of what art has to reveal
about China.
This would
exclude her from showing her work to a wider audience and therefore from
international contacts, too, if there weren't private initiatives like Living
Dance Studio in Beijing, Theatre in Motion/Arthub, run by Belgian curator and
dramaturg Els Silvrants, or Biz Art Gallery under the direction of Italian
Davide Quadrio in the art district Moganshan Lu of Shanghai. Not to mention
Island 6 in Shanghai, a pittoresque art space that is about to be demolished in
the next couple of weeks, for the megalopolis needs more space for housing
areas. It's by no coincidence that these programs are initiated by expats from
Europe; they have the intellectual faculty and entrepreneurial endeavour to
provide contemporary artists with the necessary means. It's with their programs
that these institutions support Nunu and her work as best they can, sometimes
with money and international contacts, a lot of time with space for and
expertise about production.
And this is
why Nunu could make her way to Vienna at all: Davide Quadrio and Els Silvrants
generously covered for per diems and flight tickets. So she landed on the fast
turning "planet workshop," so to speak "brand nu" from China, right at the
Arsenal. Any signs of excitement, arousal, raised pulse? Nope. Nunu is quite
cool towards the overwhelming amount of workshops that offer so many different
practices and insights into the realm of contemporary dance. To be honest, back
in Shanghai she wasn't. When she received the news of being accepted as a
"dancewebber," she sat in front of her computer and studied the extensive
workshop program for a couple of days; she didn't want to fail.
With the
assistance of Tom Lee Petterson, a Shanghai-based musician and composer
originally coming from Chicago, who is (also) her artistic partner, she decided
to pick for example an Alexander technique class or a gumboots workshop, led by
the Via Katlehong Dance Company from South Africa. She went for the right
classes, she says, and next to the performances she attends every night, the
workshops provide her with a lot of inspiring material for mind and body, to
think about and to take home. Meeting so many people from different
backgrounds, exchanging thoughts and ideas about life and dance, reinforces her
conviction that contemporary art is more about people's communication than
about the art-work. It's the process of creating she's becoming more and more
interested in, whereas in Chinese contemporary art it's solely the artifact
that counts, a good one can exchange for profit rather than profiting from
artistic progression.
There is
but one problem in Vienna: Nunu doesn't like Viennese food too much. This is
why she meets up with a Taiwanese DanceWebber she has bumped into in her
Viennese students' home and cooks Chinese dinner – every night. A habit that
could separate her from the rest of the webbers, but in fact gathers them in
the small student's kitchen around her stove, attracted by exotic scent and
taste. And in this sense, China becomes the centre of the world, again.
Info:
http://nunu.we23.org
(August 14, 2008)
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