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Shen Wei Dance Arts performs for Live Arts at the Kimmel
Sure, the Live Arts Festival has edgy artists, a fancy website, growing audiences and a shiny new name, but when it comes to bringing in the big companies, it’s nice to have friendly neighbors with shiny new buildings. Especially when your loosing potential performance space hourly to Old City condo and Starbuck construction. Last year, the Kimmel opened its doors to help us welcome C. Felix Rucker, the artist-audience relationship revolutionary from Germany. This year they are helping us bring in another big artist.
Shen Wei is quite the Renaissance man. A choreographer, dancer, painter and designer he joined the Chinese opera at the age of nine and was part of the first Chinese modern dance troupe before he moved to the States in 1995. He founded Shen Wei Dance Arts in New York in 2001 and since then has performed at Lincoln Center, the American Dance Festival and the Spoleto Festival USA. But that’s just a little background.
What we really need to talk about is the work! Shen Wei has incorporated movement-theater and visual art with his studies in Chinese Opera and modern dance for a new approach to performance. The New York Times calls his vision, “…painterly, mathematical, and idiosyncratic.” In Rite of Spring / Behind Resonance (pg 9), Shen Wei paints his dances. Using the stage as a canvas for his design and his dancers like paint, he creates a moving mural that releases the most intricate patterns of Stravinsky’s score. He challenges what we think the body should be doing in dance with surprising glimpses at the energy pulsing within the choreographic structure. If you visit his website, www.shenweidancearts.org, and look at the reviews, you see a pattern begin to emerge; this guy just stuns his audiences.
He is such a big deal the Live Arts Festival joined forces with the new Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts to make sure Shen Wei came to Philadelphia audiences. True, it made for a higher ticket price, but when you consider all of the shows you’ve been seeing for next to nothing (and sometimes, actually nothing) the amount you’ve saved definitely allows for a little splurge on a $35 ticket. It’s worth it!
Affirmation of the Day:
“I love art and art loves me. I deserve to see Shen Wei Dance Arts.”
Your ex-administrator,
Lee Ann Etzold
Sure, the Live Arts Festival has edgy artists, a fancy website, growing audiences and a shiny new name, but when it comes to bringing in the big companies, it’s nice to have friendly neighbors with shiny new buildings. Especially when your loosing potential performance space hourly to Old City condo and Starbuck construction. Last year, the Kimmel opened its doors to help us welcome C. Felix Rucker, the artist-audience relationship revolutionary from Germany. This year they are helping us bring in another big artist.
Shen Wei is quite the Renaissance man. A choreographer, dancer, painter and designer he joined the Chinese opera at the age of nine and was part of the first Chinese modern dance troupe before he moved to the States in 1995. He founded Shen Wei Dance Arts in New York in 2001 and since then has performed at Lincoln Center, the American Dance Festival and the Spoleto Festival USA. But that’s just a little background.
What we really need to talk about is the work! Shen Wei has incorporated movement-theater and visual art with his studies in Chinese Opera and modern dance for a new approach to performance. The New York Times calls his vision, “…painterly, mathematical, and idiosyncratic.” In Rite of Spring / Behind Resonance (pg 9), Shen Wei paints his dances. Using the stage as a canvas for his design and his dancers like paint, he creates a moving mural that releases the most intricate patterns of Stravinsky’s score. He challenges what we think the body should be doing in dance with surprising glimpses at the energy pulsing within the choreographic structure. If you visit his website, www.shenweidancearts.org, and look at the reviews, you see a pattern begin to emerge; this guy just stuns his audiences.
He is such a big deal the Live Arts Festival joined forces with the new Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts to make sure Shen Wei came to Philadelphia audiences. True, it made for a higher ticket price, but when you consider all of the shows you’ve been seeing for next to nothing (and sometimes, actually nothing) the amount you’ve saved definitely allows for a little splurge on a $35 ticket. It’s worth it!
Affirmation of the Day:
“I love art and art loves me. I deserve to see Shen Wei Dance Arts.”
Your ex-administrator,
Lee Ann Etzold
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