Choreographer presents traditional Chinese culture through avant-garde productions, report Zhang Kun in Shanghai and Chen Nan in Beijing.

After being commissioned by the China Shanghai International Arts Festival to create a production, choreographer Shen Wei traveled to Hainan province alone, hoping to concentrate on the project by escaping the crowds and getting closer to the nature.

With his guqin and several books, Shen rented a small house, by the sea, focusing on his choreography without any distractions. Among the books he brought with him are I Ching, or Book of Changes, and The Analects. Both are ancient Chinese books which still greatly influence the Chinese way of thinking and behavior.

He spent five months living alone in the house painting, playing the seven-stringed zither, reading as well as cooking and cleaning.

The result is an immersive multimedia production Integrate, which will premiere at the West Bund Dome, a multifunctional live show space converted from the former Shanghai Cement Factory along the Huangpu River. A total of 10 performances will be staged there from June 11 to 20, and the premiere will also mark the launch of the new space.

The cement mill had produced building materials for many landmark buildings in Shanghai, symbolizing the development of the city's landscape. So Chen Anda, deputy head of West Bund Group Corp, says they hope the dome will be similar in that respect as a "blend of new culture and art".

With a combination of a variety of art forms including dance, paintings, films, sounds and installations, each performance will bring a different experience to the audience. Attendees are invited to walk among the dancers at a distance close enough to hear their breathing.

West Bund Dome was designed based on I Ching, which brings together 64 existential situations arranged in a system of hexagrams. These 64 hexagrams form a large circle and symbolize all relationships.

"Everything is connected, which is what I want to express through this production," Shen says. "It is very modern, but its core is totally based on traditional Chinese culture."

The choreographer has developed an appetite for showcasing traditional Chinese culture through his creative and avant-garde productions.

Shen is known for his breathtakingly beautiful dance piece Scroll Painting at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Dancers performed on a constantly changing LED scroll of Chinese ink-and-wash paintings, depicting the evolution of China since ancient times.

He also likes to expand his choreography ideas outside of the theater by combining dance with different art forms and presenting them in unconventional spaces.

Undivided Divided, a performance installation Shen created, was staged at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in 2011. In the 55,000-square-foot hall, 2-meter white square panels were laid out in a grid of six rows by six. There were aisles between the panels to allow visitors to walk inside the grid. Eighteen male and female dancers moved slowly as the music alternated. The changing lights and video projections aimed to create shifts in the visitors' visual perception of time and space.

The 52-year-old choreographer says Integrate will "push forward "his 2011 installation.

Integrate will cross more boundaries and reflect deeper understanding of ancient Chinese philosophy and contemporary art, as well as Shen's perception on drastic changes in interpersonal relationships because of the pandemic.

Shen says more elements will be included in Integrate. These include 16 newly painted pieces which he created during his stay at the seaside house in Hainan, and 16 photos and some videos which he shot in both Shanghai and New York. Traditional Chinese medicine will also be added as a scent element into the production.

Born in Hunan in 1968, Shen followed the footsteps of his parents and began training as a local opera performer at the age of 9, and this enabled him to learn singing, dancing, acting and martial arts. He also learned traditional Chinese painting when he was 7.

"From choreography to paintings, traditional Chinese culture is deeply connected to my works," he says.

In 1989, he began modern dance training under the American Dance Festival's program at the Guangdong Dance Academy. He became a founding member of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in 1991, the first of its kind in China.

After winning first prize in choreography and performance at a national modern dance competition in China in 1994, he moved to New York upon receiving a scholarship from the Nikolais/Louis Dance Theater Lab. Soon, he turned his attention to film, while continuing to pursue innovation in dance theory, choreography and painting throughout the 1990s. He founded his own dance company, Shen Wei Dance Arts, in New York in 2000.

A solo exhibition of Shen's work was held at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai in 2018, offering visitors a comprehensive look at the artist's interconnected approach and work from the 1990s to the present day.

In 2019, Shen was given the 2020 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement by the American Dance Festival.

Integrate is the first time that Shen is working with dancers from all over the country after Scroll Painting.

A total of 37 dancers will perform in Integrate. Some of them are friends of Shen, whom he had met when he was one of the judges of television reality show Dance Smash last year. The show featured promising young Chinese dancers as well as veteran dancers like Tan Yuanyuan, principal ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet.

Shen recalls that he got to know some solid techniques through these Chinese dancers.

"Each dancer has his or her unique training and skills. And for me, the most important is not to make them perform the movements, but present the particular quality of each movement," he says.

"I elaborate my ideas and demonstrate movements, hoping to broaden the dancers' vision about dance. It's not easy because they have their own system of training and some of them I've never seen before."

Dancers from the Guangdong Modern Dance Company and Shanghai's Xiexin Dance Theater will also perform in Integrate.

Xie Xin, winner of Dance Smash last year and founder of the Xiexin Dance Theater, spoke of her decision in taking her team to join Integrate.

"Shen has been a lighthouse for me－from my school years to becoming a dancer and establishing my own company," says Xie at the media conference announcing the new production. "He is a mentor that I always trust, and a Chinese artist that we are proud of."

Shen has made several performances in Shanghai since 2008. This time, organizers of the China Shanghai International Arts Festival have invited him to create Integrate as part of the festival's new arm ARTRA.

ARTRA was introduced as a "playground with no boundaries", and aims to attract a younger audience to the city's live performing scene. It will consist of live concerts, new media theater shows, art markets and other events in the coming two months.

Li Ming, director of the CSIAF center, says it has introduced high-quality theater art projects to the public for more than 20 years. However, the majority of the audience attending CSIAF has been mature people.

"Everyone in the industry has given a lot of thought to the future of live theater, especially after the pandemic," says Li, explaining the center's decision to launch ARTRA. "We believe it is important to engage the young and new audience, who will bring drastic changes to the industry."