Under the Skin is a cross-cultural experiment that bridges continents

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      A Wen Wei Dance and Beijing Modern Dance Company production. A DanceHouse presentation. At the Playhouse on Friday, March 11. No remaining performances

      You didn’t have to know the inspiration behind Wen Wei Wang’s “In Transition” to enjoy it, but it certainly helped bring alive his frenzied half of the two-part cross-cultural experiment called Under the Skin.

      Wang travelled back to his homeland to work with the Beijing Modern Dance Company to create this coproduction with his Vancouver-based Wen Wei Dance team. And in this work, it was easy to read the choreographer’s feeling of being lost in the crowd when he returned to the Chinese capital. At one point a dancer twisted and turned alone in a group of frozen figures, and swarms of people literally stepped over one another in their rush.

      The overwhelming culture shock was palpable in a scene where one man had his arms pulled out board-straight on either side by two others, and struggled to dance fluidly between them; or when performers clenched their hands into a collective fist over another’s face.

      Other elements of the multimedia piece exacerbated the disorientation. Giorgio Magnanensi’s discombobulating soundscape was all electronic buzzing and distorted vocalizations, while dancer David Raymond’s video projections caught rushing Beijing crowds, goldfish surfacing for gulps of air, barbecue duck being cleaved, and performers stretching and warping their own faces.

      The other half of the evening, “Journey to the East”, choreographed by the Beijing dance troupe’s artistic director, Gao Yanjinzi, was more abstract and undefined. Its tone was calm yet haunting, reflected in the soundscape’s mixture of waves, water sounds, and melancholy strings.

      Figures moved at odds across the stage: Tiffany Tregarthen writhed and twisted as if she were rolling in a wave; David Raymond staggered zombielike along the back of the performance area. But highlights of “Journey” were its unusual duets between men and women, which ended up expressing some moving ideas about relationships. The standout was a pairing between Josh Martin and Jung-Ah Chung, an endless series of gruelling (yet effortless-looking) lifts that spoke to a man’s inability to confine his mate. She hung straight upside-down or curled up into a ball in the crook of his elbow; at other points he swung her around horizontally or hung her sleepily from one outstretched arm.

      The overall effect of the evening’s two halves was of a journey of shifting emotions—a meditative series of impressions quite different from the more concrete themes of foot-binding slippers in Wang’s Unbound or phallic pheasant feathers in Cock-Pit. At times Under the Skin felt disjointed or amorphous, but the choreography in both works was always lyrical, challenging, and innovative.

      Perhaps the most lasting and meaningful impression of all was in Gao’s work, when the row of six Vancouver dancers stood, backs to the audience, looking directly at their Chinese counterparts, who were facing them through a gauzy screen. The mirror image poetically said “We are all alike,” and drove home Under the Skin’s most important achievement: showing how contemporary art can bridge entire oceans.

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