Having amassed a reputation as one of the world's most strikingly original international dance companies, Shen Wei Dance Arts are headed by one of the dance world's most creative minds, Shen Wei—the eponymous choreographer who helms the company. Here they unveil an explosive new retrospective performance that interacts with the gracefully hanging works of art—all of which were executed by Shen Wei himself, his life work—housed in Shanghai's blockbuster The Power Station of Art, in a building that once served as a power station. This is a gallery tour like no other, filling the gallery's previously reflective halls with bodies moving with the ferocity of an abstract painting.
Since its founding in 2000, Shen Wei Dance Arts has performed across the globe, including at the Venice Biennale, Los Angeles Music Centre, Sadler's Wells, and at Frank Gehry's Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Across their oeuvre, the company has built close ties with the world of visual art; celebrating the creative bridges between the worlds of dance and the plastic arts.
"A true polymath of the creative spectrums, Shen Wei has spent a life-time studying the nuance and philosophies of bodily movement and its transposition into other forms" explains Jim Demuth, who shot this powerhouse performance. "Of course at NOWNESS we are constantly in thrall to the study of art practice, so to be able to get a glimpse inside the world that Shen Wei and his wonderful company have been developing with such love, inclusivity and endless curiosity was not only an honour, but a lesson in humility and a celebration of the true nature of creativity itself."