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Dancing from emotional to eccentric with 'Inside', 'Hoi Polloi'
2018-10-24 
Inside. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Two contemporary dance works riveted audiences Oct 17 at Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts as part of its Young Artists Platform, with unconventional performances that ranged from quietly touching to whimsical and wild.

Inside by Gong Xingxing also has a title in Chinese - Meiyou Gudao, meaning "there is no lonely island". It's an apt description of the piece, which explores the challenges of forging relationships in the information era - and does so with optimism.

Early on, one performer lies all alone in silence on a stark black stage, curling her limbs in melancholy ballet-like movements. Such powerful solos, often with minimal or no musical accompaniment, punctuate the performance. Dancers also drift apart and coalesce into duets, trios and other pairings, highlighting the theme of connections. There's vulnerability and yearning in the ways they lean on, embrace and even cradle one another, and the effect is heartfelt.

Inside. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Accordion-style silver tubes, reminiscent of metallic appendages from a robot, appear throughout Inside, whether worn on arms and legs curved around each other in a pas de deux, or peered through in periscope fashion. Gong leaves it up to the audience to decipher the symbolism (the "heavy weight of indifference" referenced in the playbook?) yet they add a unique element to the work.

Inside also benefits from an eclectic soundtrack that drives the shifting moods onstage. In one scene, Louis Armstrong's carefree cover of the classic French song La Vie en Rose - which means "life seen through rosy hues" - plays as pink lighting illuminates a performer watching others lounge on the ground. In another, a soft piano recording strikes a more tender chord as a couple moves together in a slow, fluid harmony during a duet.

Ultimately, Inside engages the audience from start to finish with its emotional core, dramatizing that universal fear of loneliness and the redemptive power of love through exceptional performances, including by Gong herself.

Hoi Polloi [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Song Xinxin's Hoi Polloi, which means the masses or common people, also aims to make a statement about humanity. But with its opening sequence - where the performers wiggle their behinds in unison as they line up before the wall - Hoi Polloi sets a far more audacious tone.

That's especially true in the moments to follow, when the performers face the audience and cycle through a wild array of gestures and facial expressions - from grimacing and adjusting groins to sneezing, yelling and wagging fingers. It's surprising to see this behavior in the spotlight, and it represents one of many such peculiar sequences sprinkled throughout Hoi Polloi.

Hoi Polloi [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The work follows an unpredictable track from scene to scene, often generating contrasts onstage. For example, in one moment, a performer careens across the stage with legs and arms flailing about, as if ready to fall, while the other dancers crouch in an orderly pattern. In another, while most of the group sways in contentment to a relaxing melody, three performers bite into apples with pained expressions as they stand aside.

Such scenes feel enigmatic and unmoored from any obvious direction, and leave the audience puzzled. This is compounded by the fact that the introduction in the playbook consists of only two vague sentences. Granted, even Inside could use a more generous description, but it overcomes this by successfully stirring the emotions, unlike Hoi Polloi.

Still, Hoi Polloi will leave you with plenty of quizzical performances to discuss after leaving the theater. And perhaps that's what the artist intended all along - to give the masses something unusual to talk about.

A stage photo of Inside. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
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