With no formal stage or any spotlight, two dancers boldly performed a site-specific dance in front of the Wuhan University old library, attracting those passing by to watch and even participate in the performance.
At 2 pm on April 13th, Shangxuan Wu, a WHU School of Art teacher together with his partner Hui Wu, started to dance at the corridor of the old library. Passers-by gathered, drawn by the performer’s sudden moves and novelty. Lying on the stairs, Hui Wu twisted and turned her body, a serious look on her face making her appear as if she was searching the ground, while Shangxuan Wu swiftly approached two stone pillars, stretched against them and ended up hanging between the two.
During the next hour, these two performers danced freely without any music and further surprised their audience by shifting from the elegant architectural complex to deep in the grove next to the Yinghua Avenue. All along the way, the performers never paused their stylish dancing. Sometimes they ran and sometimes they screamed, while at one point they had water poured on them and then shed their wet clothing. Near the end, a student violoncellist joined them with his own improvisation. Shangxuan Wu and Hui Wu meanwhile invited other audience members to participate by trapping them with sticky tapes, forming a maze among trees.
The whole performance received positive feedback. At the conclusion of the event, some audience members encircled the two dancers and peppered them with questions about this fresh form of art. Yue Xie, an alumnus who made a special trip to enjoy the show, expressed his excitement: “This was something that I’d never experienced before. I myself was so touched and involved in it. It seemed that the lines between the dancers and the audiences had been blurred.”
Site-specific dance rose out of the postmodern and avant-garde movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It is work created in response to a particular place or site, making a duet with its architecture, the design and history. “It breaks all the old patterns,” Shangxuan Wu said. “We didn’t plan a theme before as we intend to inspire the audience to assimilate and comprehend the dance from their own perspectives and hopefully to ponder upon the relationship between humans and their environment.”
WHU, which was chosen for the premier of this show, will host several other performances provided by these dancers at different sites on campus in the coming weeks.
(edited by Sijia Hu & Yoni)
