Dance theatre Invisible Cities is a poetic reinterpretation of Italian writer Italo Calvino’s novel Le città invisibili. Recasting Calvino’s storytelling on a retro sci-fi surrealist stage, a reflexive dance theatre journey unfolds between the future and the past of humankind. As the future of humans evolve into cyborgs, and as they immerse themselves in the cosmos of digital memories, where will their butterfly-mind traveling take them?

 

A boy of our time falls into the transformed world of Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, where the fictional dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan is reimagined in a futuristic setting. The boy becomes a part of the story as a cybernetic wanderer, traversing the vast cosmos of digital data, embarking on a "journey through memory." In this journey, the “invisible cities” from the past, of memories, desires, and death are summoned, repeated, danced, and waiting to be recreated.

The two acts of the dance theatre mirror each other, inspired by the story of Eusapia, one of Calvino's "Cities and the Dead"–where the living and the dead coexist above and below ground. A faint shadow of a "Trading City" is blended in—concerning Chloe, the "most chaste city." The duality also resonates with Valdrada of "Cities and Eyes"—two cities, one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down; each of the inhabitants’ actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image.

In the end, "if the last landing place can only be the infernal city," what is the wanderers’ ultimate pursuit? Or, “toward which of these futures the favoring winds are driving us?” Bodies on stage chase across the thresholds of light and darkness, as Calvino's final words blow in like a gust of wind in the guise of Marco Polo: "seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

 

 

 

 

As a dance and theatre artist, Jess’s creation engages modalities of dance theater, dance film, body and new media, documentary theater, improvisational art, and literary adaptation for performance. Approaching sensibility through rationality, she continuously explores cross-disciplinary creation and the relationship between humans and the environment. She is the founder and artistic director of Realms of the Liminal, an artist studio and platform for creative collaboration and innovation. In her earlier years, Jess worked with different dance companies and choreographers (Legend Lin Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Cie Felix Ruckert of Germany, American choreographers Stephan Koplowitz and Lenora Lee), performing in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, the Marne Valley Dance Biennale in France, Movimentos Dance Festival in Germany, and the Madrid Autumn Arts Festival in Spain. In recent years, she has received support from the Shanghai International Arts Festival, Shanghai International Dance Center, and various art curation projects, showcasing works at the Shanghai International Dance Center Theatre, China Contemporary Dance Biennial, Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum, the Bauhaus Centennial Commemoration in Shanghai, Suzhou Tongli Lizé Women's School, Yuz Museum, Ming Contemporary Art Museum, ICICLE Space, among others. Recent creations: Invisible Cities 2.022, Déjà vu Sonata, Realms of the Liminal, Time·Infinity, Myself and I in the Stream of Virtual Subconsciousness, Original Colors·Body Matters, Avatar·Mythology. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley and is a professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy.

 

 

Johann Niegl, born 1987, is a German composer and sound artist based in Berlin. He studied media arts at Bauhaus Universität Weimar and multimedia composition at Conservatory of Music and Theatre in Hamburg. He realized commissioned works at State Opera Hamburg, Zither auf Zeche Festival Dortmund and International Bauforum Hamburg among other working for renowned artists like Ursula Damm, Georg Hajdu, Robert Henke and Fredrick Schwenk. His special interest lays in evoking an intercultural exchange through artistic projects and education. In this context he created works for and participated in projects during Electronic Music Week Shanghai and International Arts Festival R.A.W. Shanghai. Further he gave lectures and taught workshops for Of Course program Shanghai and at Tongji University Shanghai.

 

 

Multimedia Design: Ethan Wang
Graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts London, with a Master's degree in New Media Art, and the first graduate of the Theater Design Department, School of Fine Arts (now Taipei National University of the Arts), majoring in Stage Design Art. Currently serving as a director of the Theater Technology Association (Taiwan), and a part-time lecturer at the Theater Design Department of Taipei National University of the Arts and the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts at National Taiwan Normal University. In 2017, Wang’s video designs for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Rice and Cloud Gate 2's 13 Tongues were shortlisted for the 2017 World Stage Design Exhibition Projection and Multimedia Design Award. Cloud Gate 2's 13 Tongues won the Silver Award in this category, and the same year Wang received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Taipei National University of the Arts. In 2014, the video design for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Rice won the First Prize in the Theatre Video Design category at the Knight of Illumination Awards in the UK. In 2013, the video design for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Water Stains on the Wall won the Bronze Award in the Interactive and New Media category at the 2013 World Stage Design Exhibition. 

 

 

Li studied under the renowned contemporary stage designer Ming Cho Lee. He obtained a Master's degree in Stage Design from the Yale School of Drama with a full scholarship and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Stage Design from the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Li currently serves as a visiting professor in the Drama Department at Fordham University in New York. His major design works in China include productions such as Pandas, 25m2 Rhapsody, Rebirth, Outpost, Money World 2.0, Alphaville, Li Zizhou in 1929, Vampire Arthur, Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Anderson Family, Traces in the Snow, Sorry, I Forgot, Between Humans and Rats, Traces in the Snow, The Gate of Zanzibar, To Love, One Summer, and the 15th FIRST Youth Film Festival. In the United States, his notable design works include productions like Kiss (Yale Repertory Theatre), Red Tree (Off-Broadway - Ensemble Studio Theatre), All My Fathers (La MaMa Experimental Theatre), Air Highway (Fordham Theatre), the opera Lucia (HERE Arts Center), Residue (Flea Theater), Maple Village (Off-Broadway - Theatre Row), and he was invited to design All's Well That Ends Well, Waiting for Godot, and The Tempest at Columbia University and Alfred University.

 

Graduated from the Drama Department of Taipei National University of the Arts, majoring in Lighting Design. Over the years, Cheng’s lighting design works include productions such as Ling Gu and Untold Stories at the National Academy of Arts (Taiwan), as well as Tom's Adventure and Taipei 1947 with the Dandelion Theatre Group. He collaborated with the Guoguang Peking Opera Troupe on Kangxi and Ao Bai, and with performances by Yang Lihua Taiwanese Opera, Xu Yafen Taiwanese Opera Troupe, Ming Huayuan Taiwanese Opera Troupe, Heart and Soul Nanguan Music Ensemble, Lanyang Dance Troupe, Dance Forum Taipei, Zhu Zongqing Percussion Ensemble, among others. Cheng served as the lighting technical director for performances such as Happiness Doesn't Need to Learn, That Night, Telling Cross-Talk on the Journey, Treasure Island Village, and A Dream Like a Dream by the Performance Workshop.

 

Costume designer for theater and film, Master of Arts in Theater Costume Design and Craftsmanship from the Accademia Costume & Moda in Rome, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Stage Design from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. Notable design works include ballets The White Snake, Disappear, Color Line, My Name is Lilac, The White Snake - Revelations in the Human World, Red, Sleeping Beauty; plays Brothers Everywhere, Faulty Daydream; musicals Panda, In that Distant Place 2514; large-scale immersive performances Salt Marsh Memories, and others. Assistant design contributions include films Railway Heroes, Storm, The Sisters Brothers; TV series Sword Snow Stride, Love and Fire, The New Pope; operas Turandot (Rome Opera House), Beauty and Sadness; ballets Peach Blossom Spring, Rite of Spring, The Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet (Rome Opera House); plays Lisistrata, Three Sisters, Six Characters in Search of an Author, among others.

 

 

 

Dancer: Chen ShanShan
Independent dancer, former member of JingXing Dance Company and Beihe Physical Theater. Graduated from the Department of Dance and Choreography of Nanjing Arts Institute. Participated in performances such as Shanghai Tango by JingXing Dance Company and The Dome, a multimedia dance drama by Zhang Xi. Original works have been invited to Guangdong Modern Dance Week, Greater Bay Area Dance Week, Shenzhen Nanshan Drama Festival, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, etc. Her creative presentations integrate dance, installation, video, and performance art.

 

Dancer: Peng ChunLan
Influenced by release techniques and circular movement systems, Peng focuses more on the trajectory of bodily movements and bodily expression. As a freelance dancer and choreographer, she has participated in numerous performances, emphasizing body development training and experimental creation. She has been involved in events such as the Guangdong Modern Dance Biennial, Beijing Modern Dance Biennial, Sino-Dutch International Dance Arts Festival, Hong Kong-Macau Urban Architecture Biennial, and the National Arts Fund Talent Development Program.

 

Dancer: Wu Yuetao
In 2021, participated in the invitation to create Cloud Atlas directed by Wang Junjian for the 2021 Greater Bay Area Dance Week; participated as a physical actor in the synthesis and performance of the play Farewell Vivian in 2021; contributed to the filming of the visual work Between Nature and Post-Nature for the Shenzhen Light and Shadow Art Season in 2021; performed in the invited production Population Without Prisoners directed by Lin Jiaxi for the Guangdong Modern Dance Week in 2021; from 2022 to 2023, participated in the production Tiger Time Talks directed by Geng Zibo for the Shanmian Theater, portraying the character "King."

 

Dancer: Zheng Lingmin
Formerly employed by the Sichuan Provincial Modern Dance Troupe and served as a guest artist of Y-Space, Hong Kong. From May to June 2017, selected as an artist-in-residence for the Hong Kong International Choreography Festival, participating in choreography and workshops. From July to October 2017, collaborated as a guest artist with Y-Space in Hong Kong and performed in multiple shows. Co-founded Death Theater with Tamae Miki in 2018. Since 2017, actively engaged in the contemporary art scene as a practicing artist, participating in art festivals, theater festivals, artistic exchanges, and other activities.

 

 

A self-media blogger who has a passion for traditional Chinese culture and has appeared as a guest on variety shows. Graduated from Beijing Language and Culture University with a major in Chinese Language and Literature, and has been living in China for 8 years. Representative works include: "Informal Talks" on Hubei TV, "Summer Under the Eaves" on Dragon TV, and "Poetry Along the Yangtze River" on Chongqing TV.

 

 

Actor: Zhang Xue Chen
A theater lecturer and actor at Theatre Above. Graduated from the Acting Department of the Film and Television Arts College at Liaoning Normal University. Previous acting credits include works such as Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, Espionage, Four Seasons Falling Flowers, No One Survived, etc. Also performed in CCTV's telecommunications anti-fraud series of films and the movie The Eight Hundred.

 

How does the movement of the body perform memory, time, history, and the future? Last night, at the Shanghai International Dance Center, I watched the dance theater production Invisible Cities directed by Jess Chiayi Seetoo. The choreography brought forth sculptural moments born from the inverse of gravitational forces, and where the dancers, in complete trust, tossed and caught each other. The soundtrack by a German musician delivered a blend of electronic beats reminiscent of Berlin nightclubs, nostalgic waltzes from a bygone era, utopias like the Peach Blossom Spring, and the juxtaposition of the perfect human body and cyborgs. Onstage, the dancers roamed, paused, and ran off on their own, while we, the audience, in our seats, had long become like reflections in a lake, lost within.
- Kaimei Olsson Wang, Senior Independent Art Curator  

 

The entire performance, through its set design and musical arrangement, conveys a vivid and intense atmosphere. Coupled with the dancers' precise control and free expression of their bodies, it resembles the feelings urban life evokes in us—profoundly personal and powerful, yet difficult to describe, elusive.
 
In the narrative structure, the performance moves from the future back to the present, detaching us from today. We seem like aimless, drifting spirits, lost in modern urban life yet unmistakably trapped in an inescapable destiny. Within this context, there are emotions directly expressed through romanticism, various intuitions and surprises from surrealism, and the rupture and loss characteristic of postmodernism.
 
In the final scene, amidst the interplay of gloomy tones and glaring lights, I felt a sense of fleeing, colliding, and melancholy. Perhaps, as the creators referenced in the program notes with a quote from Calvino: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together.”

 

Using the body to write literary classics, guiding the audience towards a poetic journey.