When Chengxin Wei came to Canada in 2000, he focused on assimilating. Born in Dalian, sent to board at the demanding Beijing Dance Academy at the tender age of 11, where he studied for 11 more years before joining the Guangdong Provincial Dance Theatre, he had been steeped in the classical style of his home country. But now he was performing with contemporary western companies like Joe Ink and Anatomica, and joining Ballet B.C. to become one of its expressive standouts for six seasons. He wanted to shed the past.

These days, Wei has entered yet another phase of his adventurous career. He’s been away from Vancouver since 2010, first studying for his master’s of fine arts at the University of Washington and then teaching at Ohio University from 2012 to 2014. And the experience is taking him full circle, finally bringing his western training together with his eastern roots. Preparing for Dances for a Small Stage point 5—The Valentine’s Edition in his first creation since he returned to Vancouver last year, he says his studies have filled his head with the history of dance and how it relates back to where he came from.

“The degree gave me so much confidence to really research something. I really want to get what’s in my brain out!” the affable artist tells the Straight at a café near the Scotiabank Dance Centre, where he’s just finished a rehearsal.

Wei was one of only three people accepted on scholarship to the U of W MFA program, aimed at preparing dancers to teach at the postsecondary level. It was a massive opportunity, but he knew it was also a huge challenge for someone for whom English was a second language. “I was constantly afraid. I was in the learning centre every day,” he says. “But it was fascinating. I had been a professional dancer for so long, and my doors really opened.”

In his studies, he looked at how eastern philosophy has influenced dance in the West—for example, the different ways seminal choreographers Merce Cunningham and Deborah Hay used the I Ching, the classic “Book of Changes”.

Now, Wei has returned to Vancouver in part for family reasons: his wife, dance artist Jessica Jone, is helping to run her mother’s Lorita Leung Chinese Dance Academy in Richmond and they have a two-and-a-half-year-old son. Wei taught at SFU last semester and wants to continue that work. But he also wants to start creating here again, and eventually resurrect his company, Moving Dragon, which Jone and he launched in 2004.

Dances for a Small Stage is a good place to start, as a familiar, open-minded showcase where he’s performed four times over the years. This rendition is a little different, though: the point 5 version takes place at the intimate, lounge-y Emerald dinner club, and finds organizer Julie-anne Saroyan matching up dancers with musicians for the event. (Matchups this time include Delhi 2 Dublin DJ Tarun “Tspoon” Nayar with Odissi classical Indian dancer Scheherazaad Cooper, and Woodpigeon singer Mark Andrew Hamilton with waacking and street-dance artist Clarence Tang.)

Wei has been paired with local singer-songwriter and Brasstronaut member Tariq Hussain (who is curating the entire evening with Saroyan). What’s been so inspiring about the project is their different takes on their Asian heritage. (Hussain’s father is a Pakistani immigrant.) “When I talked to him, I realized he’s from here and he has no accent and he plays guitar,” Wei says of the Quebec-born artist. “I’ve come from China and shaped myself as an immigrant; but for him, he is looking for where he came from. So I thought, ‘Why can’t we meet together in the middle?’ So that’s where we started.”

When the Straight speaks to Wei, the pair are still early in the creative process and don’t know what the piece will look like yet. Wei talks about how he’ll use his dance and Hussain will use his guitar in a sort of on-stage “conversation” between their cultural viewpoints.

However the piece turns out, expect to see a different side of Wei than you’ve seen before—one that embraces his past but feels much freer to explore. After all, his entire youth was spent under the strict discipline of Chinese dance training, followed by full immersion in the codified world of ballet. Now, inspired by his new historical knowledge of western dance and reconnected with the Chinese styles he absorbed over all those years, there seems to be no stopping Wei.

“Deep inside, I’ve been controlled for so many years,” he admits, and then breaks into another broad smile. “The shell inside me is melting, melting.”

Dances for a Small Stage point 5—The Valentine’s Edition takes place at the Emerald from next Thursday (February 12) to February 15.