Password: cityvan
Run-time: 5 minutes
0:00 - 0:37 [NINEEIGHT]
0:38 - 2:26 [eatingthegame]
2:27 - 3:23 [Visitors From Far Away to the State Machine]
3:24 - 5:00 [Room 2048]
0:00 - 0:37 [NINEEIGHT, 2014]
CanAsian International Dance Festival (Toronto), Seattle International Dance Festival, Dancing on the Edge Festival (Vancouver), Western Arts Alliance Conference (Vancouver)
NINEEIGHT is a multi-media dance theatre work for three performers with live-generated electronic sound and projection. The work sources from Mo Lei Tau, a phenomenon of absurdist, comedic film that emerged in Hong Kong in the 1990’s. Through the lens of this peculiar cinematic language, the work unpacks the climate of political uncertainty and anxiety of Hong Kong in the years awaiting its return to the hands of Mainland China on July 1, 1997. NINEEIGHT reflects on personal fractures, disorientation, and the significance of “motherland” at times of political, social and geographical transition.
* One of our most toured shows; it is a deeper investigation of film-maker Stephen Chow’s work, through the medium of dance. Interest with intergenerational anxieties started here.
0:38 - 2:26 [eatingthegame, 2015]
2015 PuSh Festival, 2015 Uno Fest (Victoria), 2016 SummerWorks Fest (Toronto)
eatingthegame is a motivational keynote speech of, from, and between two worlds: West and East, business and culture, pragmatics and possibility, ethics and desire. ETG investigates the risky and destructive nature of international trade, with a focus on capital investment ties between North American cities and Asia. The piece explores alternative and multidisciplinary approaches to performance and audience engagement, drawing its inspirations from the theatrics of the business and financial sector.
* A collaboration with a writer collaborator, Conor Wylie, displaying our use of new media in performance and our ambition in having a scene with an actor and their hologram.
2:27 - 3:23 [Visitors From Far Away to the State Machine, 2016]
2016 Music on Main Programming (Vancouver), 2017 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
Visitors From Far Away to the State Machine is a smutty multi-media theatre space opera with variable beginnings, middles, and endings. Two aliens travel millions of light years to Earth for their honeymoon. On their journey, they tease one another with sexy and profane stories from the past, present, and future. They arrive on planet Earth and their fantasy begins/continues/completes.
* Our full-length from this 2016; we have built upon these media techniques with No Foreigners and will employ our latest modes of inquiry in was it the smell of solitude.
3:24 - 5:00 [Room 2048, 2017]
2017 Firehall Arts Centre Season (Vancouver, BC), 2017 Public Energy Season (Peterborough, ON), 2017 IMPACT! Festival (Kitchener, ON), 2017 Montreal Arts Interculturel (Montreal, QC).
Room 2048 (2048號房) — a dream machine for the Cantonese diaspora. In digital light and smoke, we pursue a history that is not ours. A living past, a dying future, and a stillborn present. We will lie. We will cheat. We will spend a thousand years here. Room 2048 is a multi-media dance theatre work for three performers with live-generated electronic sound and projection. It was originally conceived as a companion piece/sequel to NINEEIGHT.
* Our most recent full-length dance piece, which mounted a multi-city tour shortly after its premiere earlier this year, and is currently booking for 2019. was it the smell of solitude builds upon the physical vocabulary and compositional techniques (for both body and digital media) we’ve been building since NINEEIGHT and Room 2048.