New Work "EXIT" Premiered at the Shanghai International Arts Festival
Co-commissioned by the China Shanghai International Arts Festival Rising Artists' Works (R.A.W!) Program and the Performing Arts Center – Theatre & Concert Hall, Taipei
Vimeo excerpt coming soon.
Join us for Gu Jiani's premiere North American Tour in spring-summer 2017!
EXIT grabs your heart and takes your breath away.
She created such a clear, dark world and brought us, uncompromising, into it. That is one sophisticated 26-year-old!
About the Choreographer
Gu Jiani
Gu Jiani's work embodies both fusion and juxtaposition. Born in southern China, Gu trained in ballet and classical Chinese dance. Through exploration and self-discovery, her work focuses on the relationship between visual impact, emotional impulse and physical space.
Gu previously danced with the Beijing Modern Dance Company and has worked with such artists as Germany’s Munchner Kammerspiele on “Totally Happy” and Belgium’s Tino Sehgal in “This Variation.” She started to choreograph independently in 2013. Recent project series include "Go & Nspace" and " Gu-Untitled."
Gu received awards from the 2011 and 2013 China National Centre for the Performing Arts International Choreography Competition and her works have toured throughout China. Her duet “Right & Left” was invited to the Hong Kong Arts Festival, University of Michigan, and Melbourne Festival.
In addition to choreographing, Gu also paints and creates video and multi-media projects. She collaborated on the short film "Design for Desire" which was awarded "Best Commercial Short Film" at the 2014 London Chinese Language Film Festival.
World Premiere
- October 13, 2016: 19:30 at the Shanghai Power Station of Art
- October 14, 2016: 13:15 at the Shanghai Power Station of Art
- November, 2017: Taiwan
Upcoming Tours:
About Exit
In Exit, Gu Jiani explores the human desire to exit the mundane. In a perpetual cycle of creation and destruction, we seek paths to liberty and self-fulfillment, yet our desires simultaneously stand in our own way. Inspired by the physics principle that all acting forces create equal and opposite reacting forces, Exit explores the interplay of cause and effect.
With explosive athleticism, Gu Jiani and dancers create an inter-locking system; one dancer’s action sparks a current that flows throughout the others. Against the tonal wash of a grayscale backdrop, the dancers’ precision movements interconnect like parts of a machine. Yet, juxtaposed with the perpetual motion is the idea of confrontation and rejection. In exploring the tension between conflict and acceptance, Gu Jiani’s work ultimately provokes these fundamental questions:
Where is the exit really? Or, should we re-examine our original desires?
