Day 11: It's Saturday afternoon. The show starts at 3pm and at half past our guests start arriving. Our group is first on the program. Our performance concept is simple and everyone is ready. We keep the doors to the hall closed and as the guests start arriving the lobby begins to get crowded. We've prepared big bowls of mandarins, which some of the dancers start to distribute to our guests. In the main auditorium Young-Gyu is playing music he has composed out of sounds from the Miao village - an electronic musician, he's made an amazing track with a real dance vibe to it! It's pop and contemporary, but you still feel the Miao underneath it all. The music is playing full blast, so loud that you can hear it in the lobby through the closed doors.
We've created a score with several basic rules and everyone in the group can participate: The basic idea is to mingle with the crowd as they are entering the auditorium. The players can walk, run, fall, standstill, vibrate or shake, staying in one area for awhile before changing space to an opposite location in the room. We want to try to create micro-relationships with the public - localized performing zones for a few audience members at a time. Dividing up the auditorium space over 18 performers we try to create multiple points of view, where it is impossible to have a complete overview of what is happening. The goal is to try to create a disorienting situation for our visitors, both pleasurable ad disturbing, taking a familiar space (this is their theater after all, not ours!) and making it strange and unfamiliar.
At 3pm we open the doors and the guests start spilling into the noisy hall. We shake and vibrate as they enter. Our guests are amused and bewildered. Some try to avoid us, taking their seats right away while others stop to watch, many take photos of us while still others join in the shaking. The event is totally chaotic but a lot of fun. By the time we all start to move in unison they are cheering. The show has begun!
The other groups perform after us, each time followed by a speech from one of the artistic observers. Mei-Yin Ng from Malaysia does a great solo in the second piece with silver spoons attached to her, which make noise with each movement like the Miao costumes did. The group of Arco Renz work on a circular space structure where we can all join in, moving one circle inside another at a dizzying speed. At the end there is a long question and answer session with the spectators.
Champagne is served in the upstairs foyer and we are all happy to drink and relax a bit after all the craziness of the last few days. After the theater we are treated to a Mongolian hot pot dinner and more drinking in the Hutongs. Most of us are leaving the next morning and it's hard to say good bye . .
Guitarist Emanuel Bailey from Belgium, Choreographer Ezio Schiavulli from Italy and I post performance. And below a group shot with composer Joyce Koh, Jan Goossens of the KVS, dancer Wang Mei and Guqin player Wu Na from China and Belgian saxophonist Fabrizio Cassol.
A group shot together with some of the Chinese journalists who accompanied us on the trip.
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