"a dream" (performance/2019)
There are two people I got most inspired, Lucinda Childs and Nan Goldin. Lucinda is a minimalism dancer, and Nan Goldin is a feminism photographer. When I read Nan Godin’s journal, I found similar anger and confusion with her early experiences. All the thinking when she experienced violently in close relationship, when she lost her sister(died in the age of 18) at 11 years old, when she took photographs to her families(many of the families already died in AIDS), I caught a strong inspiration since I also experienced a violence in close relationship, school bullying and be cold watched, tried to suicide from a depression when I was 19, lost some close families because of their cancer, and lost a female friend in New York who worked on filming music. Until my current life, I started to be an awareness of feminism, human rights, violence, mental health issue, social reality, and a critical perspective of sadness and hope in people’s lives. Then, I decided to present the reaction between mental space and physical movement, and I decided to record the clue of the process by body ink drawing on a circle canvas.
I set the audience as a circle around the canvas and give them masks. They needed to wear masks(there are numbers 1 to 12 were marked on masks to present clock) while I was dancing. I made the audio to be the concept clue for my audience and myself. I sewed black and white small circle fabric on the big circle canvas to present Taiji. At the end of the performance, I went to sit on one of the audiences’ circle seats, because I wanted to break the stage between audience and stage, pull the audience to the stage, and push performance in real lives.
I felt so nervous until the last moment before I started the performance because I could not connect my body physically with the audio when I practiced the performance in the home. However, I realized that the most important part in my live performance is the audience, no matter on format or inspiration. A human, audience, is a really important part of all the context for this performance. I felt released and cured by this performance since all my own experiences flashed back when I danced.
