>>PREVIEW
WEN WEI DANCE: UNBOUND
Opens April 10
Dancers’ Studio West and Theatre Junction
The GRAND (Theatre Junction)
Chinese mythology tells of an emperor who commanded his favourite concubine to bind her feet in silk and dance for him on a stage decorated with golden lotuses. As word spread of the emperor’s preference for small feet, women began to wrap their toes and arches hoping to achieve the revered "golden lotus," the three-inch foot. For almost a millennium, Chinese parents bound their daughters’ feet in tight bandages that broke their bones and caused their toes to curve underneath, pointing towards their heels. Nearly 900 years after the Dance of the Lotus, the ballet pointe shoe made its debut in the Romantic era of European ballet, and dancers still wear the shoe today to satisfy the demands of their art.
Wen Wei Wang, artistic director of Wen Wei Dance, grew up in China and studied both traditional Chinese dance and Western-style ballet. He fuses the two experiences of his culture and his training while exploring ideals of beauty and power dynamics in Unbound.
"If you look at ballet, it is beautiful," says Wang. "But if you look at the feet of the women who dance on the toe, it is painful. When I saw my grandmother’s feet with her socks off, her toes were under her feet and the top bone was all broken – almost the same as if she had worn pointe shoes."
Wang remembered his grandmother’s gnarled feet, but didn’t realize their cultural significance until years later. When he visited the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, he saw his first pair of "three-inch lotus shoes," designed to make the wearer appear she has three-inch feet.
"They are all made of silk and the handmade flower pattern is so unique. In a way, it’s beautiful. At that moment, I got it. It’s about the women, the men, power and control over women, but it’s also about beauty and the sexual."
Wang recognized the dynamics of power and sex inherently woven within traditional customs, like the careful silk weavings on the shoes. When he attended a workshop with a director from the Beijing opera, the two ideas fused together, creating a juxtaposition of pain and beauty, of freedom and oppression.
"I knew I wanted to have some Chinese culture involved, but I didn’t know what I’d do," recalls Wang. "The director brought a pair of three-inch lotus shoes and as soon as I saw them, I asked the dancers to try them on. When they put them on, (the dancers) started moving and everything started to change. The idea, and the movement and the look – at that moment, I said, ‘That’s what I want. Those shoes.’"
Working collaboratively with his team of five other dancers, Wang began to explore concepts of beauty and power, using the shoes as inspiration. He sees both the shoes’ beauty and their sexual power, as well as the oppression inherent in their design.
The shoes are not just costumes, but the only set pieces as well. James Proudfoot’s lighting incorporates different shades of red, drawing on the sexual connotation of the red lanterns that lit a concubine’s doorway in Imperial China on their night with the master. Giorgio Magnanensi’s score moves back and forth between two periods – the dream and the reality. "We are who we are now, we are not living in the past," explains Wang. "But when you put the shoes on, your self changes. Your memory changes, almost taking you back to that place. And the lighting changes, so you have those two times." The lighting, the score and shoes combine to create a past and present, beauty and pain.
Wen Wei wonders how much of a role choice plays in our notion of beauty. "This piece is universal. It is about our human relationships, our freedom. Are we still free now? Because that’s a question. Plastic surgery for women, the face-lifts and the breasts that have to be surgically re-sized – they think it is beauty, fashion, whatever. But when we look back at our history, it makes sense in a different way. Maybe our technology has changed, but the way we think about women, or the way we treat women, or the way we are human, has not changed. We are not completely free."
Though perhaps not free, Wang argues we are free to chose. "Women, when they are four years old, have no choice. Now, women have choice. They go or they don’t, they change their face, they change their body." Though young girls in Imperial China didn’t choose to have their feet bound, women today willingly lace up their pointe shoes or slip into their stilettos. Whether a cultural paradigm or a fashion statement, women make their own decision about their footwear. "Now, you have a choice," Wang explains. "That’s the difference." |
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