Debra Li

    CONTEMPORARY dance and theater performance, the choice of more art-savvy audiences, are trying to engage more Shenzheners.

    Themed “Memory/Body,” the Beijing-based Caochangdi Workstation (CCD) and Living Dance Studio will conduct a 10-day art festival at the invitation of the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (better known as OCAT). Starting Dec. 10, audiences will be able to enjoy free live performances in dance and theater as well as attend video seminars and lectures. To encourage participation, over 30 locals will be chosen to perform in the play “Treatment,” directed by young artist Wen Hui.

    This is the third year that OCAT has sponsored a contemporary dance and theater festival, which features a mix of performance art, installations and documentaries.

    “We have worked well with the CCD in the past two years. They try a mix of art and reality and merge different forms of expression, which gives rise to new possibilities for art,” said Fang Lihua, spokesperson of the OCAT.

    This year’s festival will feature domestic art troupes and promote the works of young choreographers.

    The Paper Tiger Theater Studio, founded in 1997 by Tian Gebing in Beijing, will bring a new piece of work “Recitation.” The one-hour play originated from Tian’s attempt to grasp the meaning of the word “recitation.” “How can a person do a recitation properly? Is it a way to escape troubled reality? Or is it just an obsolete word, because there are not many good works for us to recite now?” Tian draws people’s thinking to many issues.

    The Living Dance Studio will perform three theatrical works created in the past two years. “Treatment,” created in 2008 and touring to the Culturescapes festival in Switzerland this year, attempts to address the troubles of people living in modern society and their struggle to heal themselves. A man loses his wife and he wants to find her. A woman, who could be the wife or just another amnesia patient, also suffers hypochondria. The actors and actresses attempt possible solutions as they act out their own stories.

    “Memory I,” performed by Wen Hui and Wu Wenguang, shares with the audience the experience of growing up in the late 1960s and ’70s. “Memory II — Hunger,” the cast of 18 ranging from professional dancers, farmers, retirees, documentary directors to art school students, is a truth-seeking journey trying to address what happened in China 50 years ago. Between 1959 and 1961, a big famine struck China caused by natural disasters as well as the Great Leap Forward.

    Young choreographers at the festival will include He Qiwo from Guangzhou and Zhang Mengqi from Beijing. His “Dual Existence” will question his own identity and sexual identity while Zhang’s “Self-portrait II” looks in retrospect at her self-education during puberty.

    Three documentaries, by the artists who created and performed the live shows, will be shown. They deal with the same themes as the theatrical and dance works.

    Wu Wenguang’s “Treatment” mixes his self-healing process after deprivation of his mother and the vivid memories of her.

    Zou Xueping’s “The Hungry Village” recounts the last two years of his grandmother and the memory of 15 elderly villagers who survived the big famine.

    Professional dancer Zhang Mengqi also made a documentary “Self-portrait and Three Women” to question her fate as a woman. “My grandma, a sacrifice to her unhappy marriage, passed her hopes for a happy love life to my mom. My mom passed the same hopes to me because she, too, is unhappy. Marriage is a dream for women, but it can also be the murderer that kills your dream,” said 23-year-old Zhang.

    The performance workshops, training amateurs for the play “Treatment,” are an attempt to invite the audience on stage and realize the mix of art and reality.

    Schedule

    Dec. 10 7:30 p.m. Opening ceremony and outdoor show

    Venue: Outdoor OCAT

    8 p.m. Recitation

    Venue: OCAT main hall

    Dec. 11 2-3:30 p.m. Paper Tiger Theater and the trend of independent theater in Beijing

    Lecturer: Tian Gebing

    Venue: OCAT multifunctional hall

    4-6 p.m. Video and seminar: The Hungry Village

    Venue: OCAT multifunctional hall

    Dec. 12 2-4 p.m. Video and seminar: Self-portrait and Three Women

    Venue: OCAT multifunctional hall

    4-6 p.m. Video and seminar: Treatment

    Venue: OCAT multifunctional hall

    8 p.m. Live performance: Treatment

    Venue: OCAT main hall

    Dec. 13 8 p.m. Live performance: Treatment

    Venue: OCAT main hall

    Dec. 14 8 p.m. Young choreographers’ dance show

    Venue: OCAT main hall

    Dec. 15 8 p.m. Young choreographers’ dance show

    Venue: OCAT main hall

    Dec. 17 8 p.m. Memory I

    Venue: OCAT main hall

    Dec. 18 2-4 p.m. Video and seminar: contemporary dances

    Venue: OCAT multifunctional hall

    Dec. 19 1-9 p.m. Memory II — Hunger

    Venue: OCA main hall

    Hotline: 2691-5102

    Web site: http://www.ocat.com.cn