Zodiac performers
Beijing dancers are animals of the calendar in The Twelve Souls of Time
On a recent humid afternoon in a rehearsal room of the Beijing Modern Dance Company, some 100 people sit on the floor chatting. Then they start to move under the guidance of 12 dancers.
“You tell me how you feel about this after the lesson,” Gao Yanjinzi, the troupe’s artistic director, tells the audience.
“You dance the way you want to. There is no standard.”
The celebrated dancer-choreographer is giving a free lesson to interested people, and her dancers are demonstrating moves from the troupe’s latest work, The Twelve Souls of Time, which will be staged at the capital’s Tianqiao Theater on the weekend.
It will be the third round of performance of the show since it premiered in Beijing in May.
So far, the show has toured five cities on the Chinese mainland.
While the troupe, which was founded in 1995, has earned respect abroad, it still struggles to promote the art form at home.
Gao, a founding member who graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy with a major in modern dance choreography, has been trying to promote modern dance in China for long.
In The Twelve Souls of Time, which Gao has choreographed, she tells a story of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, inspired by Shan Hai Jing, or Classics of Mountains and Seas, a collection of Chinese legends written more than 4,000 years ago.
Gao created this sleeping “mountain god” that the 12 animals try to awaken. Through six challenges, the animals conquer their fears during a long journey and finally meet the god.
In the process, the animals also become gods themselves and safeguard the wheel of time.
In the Chinese zodiac, the years are given different symbols represented by the 12 animals. People born in each year are said to share some characteristics with the representative animal.
Gao has her 12 dancers imitating the moves of the animals through modern dance.
“Modern dance is different because you cannot categorize its moves. There are no limits. It’s an art form that respects individuality. Both the dancers and the audience are required to be involved,” she says.
“Audiences should abandon predictions about what they are going to see in a performance. The ability to imagine and interact with the dancers is very important,” she adds.
Before The Twelve Souls of Time, Gao released her choreography work in 2013, Blooming of Time, which was inspired by the rotation of the 24 solar terms on the traditional Chinese calendar.
The Twelve Souls of Time continues her idea to pay respect to time, which marks the cycle of life.
“The 24 solar terms and the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac are essential parts of Chinese culture, which display the wisdom and philosophy of our ancestors,” says Gao. “We want to introduce the ancient culture to the audience through contemporary dance.”
Born in Guiyang, Southwest China’s Guizhou province, Gao is a member of the Tujia ethnic group.
She has received a number of awards for dancing and choreography both in China and abroad, including the Grand Prix at the International Modern Choreography Competition in Belarus in 1999 for her choreography work Worlds.
She has toured the world with her dance shows.
In 2008, she was invited by German dancer-choreographer Pina Bausch to create and perform the solo work, As I Heard, which premiered at Bausch’s festival in Wuppertal, Germany.
Gao’s combination of elements from traditional Chinese culture and modern dance was highlighted in her work Oath Midnight Rain that premiered at the Venice Biennale in 2006 and used a score inspired by Peking Opera.