This weekend, Jochem and Milou, friends from SiloTheatre (Amsterdam) visited. Jochem and Milou have been in Hong Kong collaborating with Theatreworks to create a site-specific work. Yang Qian and Song Jie (Fat Bird members) first met them during the Macau Arts Festival, 2004. Jochem and Milou, along with other members of SiloTheatre came to Shenzhen University after the festival to create some pieces with Song, Yang, and Song’s acting students.
Jochem and Milou are interested in the exploration of objects and space, and how movement animates the possibilities latent in any arrangement of things. This emphasis on using what is present at every moment, including sounds “outside” the acting space or audience reactions, dovetails with the artistic trajectory that Fat Bird has pursued: improvisation and exploration of one’s limits as both the method and end of performance. Accordingly, every workshop is simultaneously practice and a finished piece, or perhaps its more accurate to say that each workshop constitutes a moment in an ongoing collaboration. In this sense, Jochem and Milou’s visit picks up and reweaves previous collaborations as well as whatever happened in between visits.
Since September 2005, Yang Qian, Liu Hongming, and Yang Jie have been meeting every weekend to work with different objects and explore different spaces. A playwrite and poet, Yang Qian has been exploring the limits to language and sound. A dancer, Liu Hongming has been working through and against his formal training. A violinist and composer, Yang Jie is exploring digital manipulation of sounds. A piece emerges as the three occupy a space and then begin to use the space. The have performed outside in Shenzhen University as well as a rehearsal hall. When there is an audience presence they have incorporated the audience into the workshop. Sometimes, Yang Qian will ask for words, and those will be the core of his poetry composition. Other times, Liu Hongming or Yang Jie will ask for an object. The three take turns leading the piece—so a piece might begin with language, movement, or sound. On May 1st, the three will participate in the Guangzhou Festival of Modern Dance.
On April 1, 2006, Jochem and Milou joined the Fat Bird Workshop for an afternoon of improvisation, discussion, and dinner. I will upload a clip from the April 1, 2006 Fat Bird Workshop. In the meantime, I have also posted pictures of us siteseeing in Shekou and Overseas Chinese Town. I suddenly realize how found I’ve become of posing as a tourist in order snap pictures and make friends.
Shenzhen Noted 