Interview by William Chan
Local art organisation Four Dimension Spatial will stage a performance called “Expressive Sight: Take Root” this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday as part of its “Deconstruction of Subjectivity” series around the Guia Hill area, performance producer Chong Weng Kei said in an online interview with The Macau Post Daily last week.
The interview also included choreographer Wu Hui and performer Lao Pui Lon.
Founded in 2013, Four Dimension Spatial aims to create diverse artistic projects and viewing experiences for audiences, as well as providing platforms for local artists for communication and production. The “Deconstruction of Subjectivity” series, launched this year, is a multi-region project where artists with different backgrounds cooperate to create a collusion of ideas.
“Expressive Sight: Take Root” explores the intricate relationships in the ecological community of plants. The audience, accompanied by a “tour guide” will take a short trip around the Guia Hill area while viewing the artists dancing along. The core theme of the performance is to bring out the mutual-dependent, invasive and parasitical nature of plants, as well as how they interact with each other and the environment, Chong said.
According to Wu, “Expressive Sight: Take Root’’ is not a project about environmentalism. Environmentalism, after all, is an anthropocentric idea which revolves around how people should act in order to preserve nature. “What I want instead for the performance is to think from the perspective of the ecology: to see how they actually interact with us and with each other. I think once we start to think that ecology itself is an autonomous agent with its own system, then we can really start to work out a plan that truly respects the ecological system,” Wu said.
Wu said that the concept of ecologism is mainly expressed through the interaction between the dancer and the Guia Hill environment. “We studied and researched the form and growth pattern of plants, and subsequently developed a series of dances which imitate the movement of the plants,” Wu said, adding that he considered the Guia Hill environment as the area with the richest biodiversity in the Macau peninsula – a diversified ecological sphere with different species of plants in the arbour layer, shrub layer and herbaceous layer.
Most of the dance is performed on a slope near the hill, and the audience will see different terrains such as waste land and secondary forest with a clear boundary with each other. Besides the hill, casinos, and other buildings also appear as the background of the performance. “The historical development of Macau, the characteristic architectural style all merged with the Guia Hill which had been around much earlier than these modern buildings. For me, human activities have their own ecological movements as well. The purpose of the performance is to compare and contrast human society and ecology,” Wu said.
Lao agreed with Wu and said that the dancer’s primary task is to interpret the dynamics of plants with their body movements. “Between plants and plants; between plants and the environment; between people and the environment, they have their respective interactions and structures. We want the audience to see these interactions and structures via our interpretation of the ecology of plants.
“Choreographer Wu Hui emphasised that in art, behaviour is an expression in itself. It is difficult for us to perceive the behaviour of plants, because they often move slowly compared to the human eyes, and generally we can only observe their appearance. Therefore, during the rehearsal process, we watched a lot of time-lapse photography to observe how plants grew and interacted with the environment, as well as documentaries on nature and visiting gardens,” Lao said, adding that these observations allowed the dancer to have a stronger understanding of the will and representation of the greenery.
“Expressive Sight: Take Root” will be held at the Guia Hill area on the coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The performances will start at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, as well as 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday respectively. To purchase tickets, visit https://forms.gle/6uoj7EeJCXzYgYnKA The ticket price is 100 patacas, with various discounts available.
Lao Pui Lon (centre) and two other dancers rehearse recently around the Guia Hill area. – All photos provided by Four Dimension Spatial
This undated photo shows choreographer Wu Hui posing.
