Closed

The Divine Sewing Machine - Dance Theatre with 16 Children

Venue:

Shanghai International Dance Center Experimental Theater

1650 Hongqiao Road Changning Shanghai

Date:

8/25/2018 - 8/26/2018

This ticket is only available as a paper ticket

Closed

The Divine Sewing Machine - Dance Theatre with 16 Children

8/25/2018 - 8/26/2018

Shanghai International Dance Center Experimental Theater

1650 Hongqiao Road Changning Shanghai

￥180 - ￥680

Paper ticket

Event details

16 children are the protagonists of this dance theatre. The work is inspired by "Lang Du Qiang", a performative phenomenon in China.

It describes how we read aloud together in the class or even alone in front of others with pretended emotions. The elder generation, our generation and the children of today are growing up by learning and using this special form of "reading aloud together at the same pace with passion". We will not criticize "Lang Du Qiang", but try to find out children's own (real) way of reading-in games, in dancing, in making noises.

In this way, we would like to develop a performative form in theatre with them. The text is adapted from Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot", mainly based on the dialogues between Vladimir and Estragon. This time, in theatre, children are having a conversation with the adults - with us.

Director: Wang Mengfan

Mengfan Wang was born in 1990 and works as a director. She studied History of Art at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and has been studying History of Art and Dance Studies in Munich and Cologne since 2013. Her first theatre project “50/60 – Dance Theatre with Dama” was created in Beijing in 2015. The work was premiered at the Beijing Nanluoguxiang Performing Arts Festival and presented at the VIE Festival in Bologna afterward. At the 2017 Beijing Fringe Festival, she created her second dance theatre piece “The Divine Sewing Machine”, which featured thirteen children.

Both pieces focus on the human body and its performative expression in the theatre. The performers in her pieces are not professional actors, but rather belong to a certain group, according to their social identities.

The photo and video documentation that accompany her theatre works were nominated for the Discovery Award at the 2017 Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival and exhibited there.