{"id":5096,"date":"2015-09-28T07:49:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T07:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/?p=5096\/"},"modified":"2017-08-29T01:53:23","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T01:53:23","slug":"gu-jianis-right-left-challenges-assumptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/gu-jianis-right-left-challenges-assumptions\/","title":{"rendered":"GU JIANI\u2019S \u2018RIGHT & LEFT\u2019 CHALLENGES ASSUMPTIONS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out the full Arts Intercepts article at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joseph Lam, Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (CI), climbed a short set of\u00a0stairs from the house of the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater up to the edge of the stage and immediately noted that he\u2019d been given specific directions: Don\u2019t touch the floor.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it was a pristine white marley lining the Mendelssohn\u2019s stage, whose\u00a0unique white plaster cyclorama\u00a0and exposed fly rails elicited a clean,\u00a0sparse\u00a0space for the North American premiere of Gu Jiani\u2019sRight &\u00a0Left<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on Sept. 26, 2015. It is perhaps not by accident that the\u00a0sleek performance space was juxtaposed\u00a0by\u00a0opulent oak panels and plush red velvet seats\u00a0in the house.<\/p>\n

\"GU

GU JIANI AND LI NAN IN GU\u2019S \u2018RIGHT & LEFT\u2019 | PHOTO BY FAN XI<\/p><\/div>\n

Right & Left<\/em> seems to be about these sorts of juxtapositions, or rather, what we do with them. The two women onstage, choreographer Gu Jiani and her partner Li Nan,\u00a0are both trained in Chinese and western concert dance, and their sylph-like figures are deceiving at first. The piece begins quite formally as the two women slide in and out of the ground, each with an\u00a0\u00e9paulement<\/em>\u00a0characteristic of classically trained dancers. Gu\u2019s movement is grounded in this\u00a0vocabulary, until it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

What begins as a satisfying\u00a0exercise on unison dancing degrades into an embodiment of the human experience through a series of long vignettes incorporating two simple stools and, near the end, a gray table sitting cockeyed upstage for the duration of the work.<\/p>\n

It quickly becomes clear that this is no exercise \u2013 Gu is unafraid to break the rules of classical dancing as she and Li weave in and out of their light, or continue\u00a0halfway into the wings as if the dancing extends beyonds its visual\u00a0confines.\u00a0The third player in Right & Left<\/em> is Ah Ping, a projection artist manipulating light live throughout the performance. Although the collaboration began\u00a0as a practical financial decision against hiring a conventional lighting designer, Ah Ping\u2019s contributions turn out to be a critical piece of the puzzle. The stark white front light from the projector casts distorted shadows onto the back wall and floor while Ah Ping cuts and sections off parts of the stage, manipulating our perspective of the dancers.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0more salient section, the seated Gu Jiani is tossed about like a rag doll as\u00a0Li Nan\u00a0asserts her power, the pair dimly illuminated by Ah Ping. \u00a0Each toss back and forth seems to complicate\u00a0the connection between the two women. Their movement evokes images of\u00a0madonna and child in one moment, sadistic inamorata in the next.\u00a0Right & Left<\/em> doesn\u2019t appear to be about love or relationships, exactly, but there is such a muddled,\u00a0unemotional intimacy going on between its characters.<\/p>\n

This is perhaps attributed to the delicate balance struck between discipline and reckless abandon; Gu demonstrates a\u00a0masterful degree of restraint by\u00a0not putting all her cards on the table. Rather, she sets a prop, a light, a movement idea, or another dancer in front of her and exploits every possibility it has\u00a0before moving on. Whether this patience is attributed to ingenuity, rebellion, or simple economics \u2013 it\u2019s enough to make the audience writhe in its seats, in a beautifully satisfying way.<\/p>\n

\"PHOTO

PHOTO BY FAN XI<\/p><\/div>\n

In a larger sense, it\u2019s difficult to discuss the work without also considering the context in which it\u2019s been placed for this particular performance.\u00a0Consider this: Gu Jiani is a Chinese contemporary choreographer\u00a0performing for the first time in the US, represented\u00a0by Ping Pong Productions<\/a>, a Beijing-based producer lead by expat Alison Friedman. The Confucius Institute at the University of Michigan\u00a0reached out to Emily Wilcox, a dance scholar and professor specializing in contemporary Chinese performance, and through her connection with Friedman, CI presented contemporary dance for the very first time (ergo Lam\u2019s endearing\u00a0reference to\u00a0the white marley).<\/p>\n

In his pre-performance announcement, Lam noted more than once the \u201cvery expensive, but very top quality\u201d nature of the project, and rolled off a long list of philanthropic organizations who supported it.\u00a0For this and so many other reasons, it\u2019s frustrating that Right & Left<\/em> was offered to the public for free. The fact that it occurred on a day in which hoards of Wolverines spent thousands upon thousands of dollars tailgating is downright infuriating.<\/p>\n

Gu Jiani is making work in a place where there is no funding for independent artists, and the post-show discussion made note of the happy accidents in Right & Left<\/em> that were financially motivated.\u00a0And yet, the work has such a level of sophistication that every decision \u2013 whatever the reason\u00a0\u2013 felt intentional and right. \u201cSimplicity has a lot of options,\u201d said Gu (translated by producer Alison Friedman) in the post-show Q & A.<\/p>\n

Presenting work in the United States probably won\u2019t\u00a0change the way dance is funded in China, and we certainly have our own financial challenges to deal with in the arts. However, by bringing our attention to Gu Jiani and other artists making innovative work outside the US and Europe, the conversations surrounding the arts become richer, stereotypes begin to dismantle, and dance, on the whole, just gets better.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is transforming,\u201d said Joseph Lam, \u201cand Gu Jiani is reflective of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out the full Arts Intercepts article at this [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-cn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/GU-JIANI\u2019S-\u2018RIGHT-LEFT\u2019-CHALLENGES-ASSUMPTIONS.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6185,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions\/6185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}