It may not have the Bird's Nest, but there is one thing Durham has that Beijing doesn't yet.
"We always go to Cosmic Cantina," said Shen Wei, founder and artistic director of Shen Wei Dance Arts. The internationally renowned choreographer and dancer cites the vegetable wrap as his favorite.
The principle choreographer for the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Wei has been part of the Durham dance scene since 1995 when he was first invited to dance in the American Dance Festival. Described by Aaron Greenwald, director of Duke Performances, as one of the two premier dance festivals in the country, ADF has featured Wei's work for the last nine years and sponsored him for eight. His dance style combines Eastern influences with modern techniques and draws from his background in Chinese opera and the visual arts, especially calligraphy and painting.
Now Wei is back in Durham, but this time for a 12-day residency at Duke that lasts until Jan. 24. His stay here is part of what SWDA Executive Director Brett Egan described as "a larger effort to establish more of a collaborative presence" between Duke and the festival.
So far, Wei and his company have hosted master classes on campus, given presentations at the Franklin Humanities Institute and helped student choreographers with the upcoming Lunar New Year performance. Scott Lindroth, vice provost for the arts and professor of music, said that Wei's involvement in these events highlights his eagerness to show that "dance can engage issues broader than just pure choreography" and that "art can serve as a tool for cultural diplomacy."
"Duke has a large Asian population and a large Chinese population in particular," Greenwald said. "Another thing that was attractive with this is that it's an opportunity to engage with that population in a way that we don't always do."
While in Durham, SWDA will also work on Re-, a triptych consisting of three parts that will focus on Tibet, Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Silk Road in China, respectively. Wei has spent a total of three months in Tibet, two and a half weeks in the jungles of Angkor Wat and 30 days on the Silk Road accumulating experiences that will serve as inspiration for the project.
Egan said the triptych focuses on restorative concepts such as return, rethink and revisit. "[Re- is] grounded very much in the lifestyle and the experiences of the people in these three cultures, rather than coming from a completely abstract source," he said. "I think you can look at it as a plea for understanding and for coexistence."
Currently working on the second part, Wei and his company will perform the first two parts at the end of his residency and premiere the entire finished dance at the ADF this coming summer.
"It's pretty exciting that we get to be in the middle of this creative process," Greenwald said. He added that Wei also has a unique way of rehearsing that derives from the high level of trust Wei has in his dancers, whom he has trained in his particular style.
"[Wei] is very much more about the physical experience and the physical inevitability of dance," said Ken Rumble, director of marketing for Duke Performances. "Dance is an art form of human bodies in gravity. I think that at the most fundamental level he's teaching [his dancers to] release some of the expectations and contrivances that I think we have about moving in the world and kind of put it in simple terms."
Though master classes have been taught by members of the company rather than Wei himself, Wei said that he has been struck by the students' passion to learn more about the dance world.
"I can tell in [the students'] eyes that they want to know everything that I know," Wei said. "They want to know what I've been through and what it is like to be a professional dancer or work in the arts."
And with a packed schedule, a big part of being a professional dancer is attending to the body's needs- be it through Cosmic Cantina or other venues.
"The dancers spend about four hours a day at Whole Foods," Egan said. "They spend their whole paychecks at Whole Foods."
The Shen Wei Dance Arts will perform Re-(Part 1) and In Progress: Re-(Parts 2 & 3) tomorrow and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Reynolds Industries Theater. For ticket prices, visit http://tickets.duke.edu/show.asp.
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