TOUR ON CHINA – DIFFERENT AUDIENCES, OTHER PERSPECTIVES
- HANGZHOU – ZEHEIJIANG ART MUSEUM
- SHANGHAI – TONGJI UNIVERSITY, XINTIANDI, GLOBAL HARBOR, BIBLIOTECA INSTITUTO CERVANTES
- BEIJING – FESTIVAL FRINGE
- GUANGZHOU – INTERNACIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL
20 days, with 9 performances and 7 different get-ins. Our “spoken-action”, in Spanish translated simultaneously into Chinese, has been seen by 1.300 people
At the Zeheijiang Art Museum of HANGZHOU 200 people came to see the show, an audience with an interest in Contemporary Art, and some artists, mainly sculptors. It was the first time this museum organised an event about dance. After the lecture many hands went up when question time came around.
SHANGHAI is very cosmopolitan, brand names reign throughout as does its modern architecture of towering buildings that light up at night and consume lots of energy. We performed at the University of Tongli to an audience with an interest in art, especially in dance. Straight after which we did two very unususal performances in shopping malls. The first, Xintiandi oozes ‘glamour’, about 100 culturally sensitive people, of which a group are dance students, gathered there to watch us and take their picture with us. The other shopping mall is a huge building: Global Harbor, a place where people go to spend the day, and in an “Entertainment Space” we introduced them to dance. 200 people attended, and were curious to know what we did. Everyone listened and watched carefully.
We ended the tour of Shanghai with a performance at the Cervantes Institute Library, it is not a very big space, but has a very keen and loyal audience following the events they program there. An audience the Cervantes Institute has won over one by one, with rigourous publicity and the efforts of all the team that work there.
We changed the mood entirely when we went to BEIJING a more traditional city, where history shines through its monuments and temples, its streets and people. We gave three performances at Festival Fringe, one of those festivals that is a miracle as it is lead largely by volunteers, most of whom are students, that offer up their time to make way for a more rebellous and contemporary scene. They program artists from all over the world. At the Fringe we found a professional theatre arts audience, grateful that our performance could help them give a synthetic form and order to Dance History.
Finally we travelled 2,200 Km for a last performance in the more tropical GUANGZHOU. The Beijing Fringe Festival sent us to bring the international scene closer to the people of the region of Canton. We performed in a very modern building, a kind of cultural centre for children and young people, inside which hid a 320-seat theatre. We managed to half-fill it. There was no dance linoleum or parquet, but a grey business carpet.
We can confirm, through the experience of this journey, that in China, the stagings are complicated, many staff are involved, and a strict heirarchical order is followed. To do a job that in Europe is normally carried out by two people, here takes ten. Despite the difficulties in adapting oneself to a different social and professional environment, all the performances went well and accomplished a high level of quality.
And on a final note, we can safely say that we have felt very well accompanied throughout the whole tour, by the audience and a collection of good professionals: managers, producers, translators and technicians.
BdDANSA / BEATRIU DANIEL & TONI JODAR
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