Meet the Artist

Liu Qi and her “Upon Calligraphy”

Dance to me has always meant to buy a ticket, sit in the theatre for an hour or so ethereal experience. It has never come up my mind that a dance performance actually involves the works of people from different specializations. The stage, the lighting, the costumes and the dance are put together into a seamless performance on stage. Behind all these works is the choreographer who conceives and gives birth to the work after a long painful period to turn inspirations into flesh and blood.

On May the 4th, I saw the open rehearsal of “Upon Calligraphy” in the Guangdong Modern Dance Festival and had a glimpse of the hardwork behind the scene. The piece is going to be staged on 18-19th June in Guangzhou. This is a good chance to see how a new piece of works is brought to the stage. I took the opportunity to talk to the choreographer, Ms. Liu Qi about her journey of creating this new work and I hope to discover what is hidden behind the glamour of the stage unseen by the theatre audience.

Liu Qi is the executive artistic director of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Her biography tells a lot about her profound experience and accomplishments in dance. When I talked to her, she appeared to be very friendly. She listened carefully and spoke slowly in a graceful manner. Yet, the way she talked gave me an impression of perseverance and firmness. She talked with affluent gestures. To watch her talk was like to watch her dance. She said with a coyly smile, “I am more used to expressing myself through my body language. I am not and eloquent person and I need to compensate it with body language.” But I think she lives in dance inside-out and dance is inseparable from anything she does.

I have seen other works by Liu Qi and noticed that her works are infused with some very Chinese classical taste in a modern dance choreography. The present “Upon Calligraphy” is also taken from traditional Chinese calligraphy. It seems that integrating the old and the new, the East and the West has become her signature.

Liu:

“I never think about the distinction between the East and the West, nor that between China and abroad when I choreograph. Sometimes I start from a theme and sometimes from the intuition of the body. It is not strange that my works have a “Chinese” sentiment because I am Chinese and my dancers are Chinese. To intentionally suppress our identity would make it unnatural. But we don’t try to emphasize it either. Nowadays, we face more and more universal than local problems. Regional demarcation has become vaguer and vaguer in some ways. My “Upon Calligraphy” explores an issue we all face in this information age. I just utilize something I am most familiar with to express it.”

Q: “How do you use traditional calligraphy to describe the present experience?”

Liu:

“We live in an age of information in which written language is reduced to electronic codes. Communication is extremely fast but it has also become robotic. Traditional writing requires us to do it physically stroke by stroke and everybody has a unique handwriting partly due to the person’s individual dispositions. Today, the computer replaces most hand written labor and writing becomes merely a matter of touching the keys. The appearance is identical from person to person, from computer to computer. I feel that something is missing , some personal touch. I am not against change. But I wish to make the change visible so that we know where we stand in this rapidly changing world. My work does not judge. It merely illustratesand it is up to the audience to say for themselves how they think and feel.”

“I have picked the different styles in the history of character development to represent the process of change on the one hand, and the emotional quality of writing and communication on the other. Each of these character styles is characteristic in shape and each symbolizes a unique underlying temperament. For example, the bone script symbolizes tartness, the seal script symbolizes gracelness, the officialscript symbolizes harmony, Regular script symbolizes determination and the grass script symbolizes unbridled expressiveness.”

Q: “how would you communicate with the dancers during the creation process?”

Liu”

Communication is a very critical element all through the process. I try to get my ideas across and try to anticipate theirs. At the end of the day, I wish to see something that is in line with my vision but with their energy input. In does not always work, especially in the beginning. In order to let them understand what I am looking for, I have made them practice Chinese calligraphy with the traditional brush and ink. That helped. On the whole, the experience has been very good for both the dancers and myself.

Looking at the effortless movements and the smooth flow of performance, it is hard to imagine the time and labor behind it to make it happen. The talk to Liu Qi reveals part of the creation process. There are also the necessary input of lighting, stage, costumes expertise to make the performance successful. And the dancers’ seemingly effortless movements are the result of years of training and practice.

I really look forward to seeing the conversation of modern dance with Chinese calligraphy on June 18-19th.