In an age where Algorithmic choreography, the technique of teaching computers to choreograph dance is up for serious discussion, or where cameras the size of an acorn now fit on the end of a pointe shoe recording every footstep as data for a 3D animated performance it’s fair to ask, are we losing our collective mind? This is Wan Chai: Moving Cities in Hong Kong asks the question.
Where good ol’ fashioned cinematic art meets raw improvised dance is where the Moving Cities project begins. Gone are the days where dancers lock themselves in a room full of mirrors to only reappear for a groomed auditorium. Now we live in a world where you can have your own YouTube channel for free and millions of ungroomed are waiting to see what you have to say. Dancers fluent on the stage, are on the precipice of understanding the power of the moving image. The marriage of filmmaker and choreographer have never sounded so special. Add a city to this and that’s where you’ll find Moving Cities.
Moving Cities is the flagship project of creative agency, Wind & Foster. Their latest brief, Hong Kong is where they have produced MTR’s largest photographic art installation. MTR, the largest rail operator is the people’s railway of Hong Kong. It seems fitting they have commissioned one of the most exciting placemaking projects to fit out MTR Wan Chai – the main gateway to the scintillating art district of Hong Kong. Today the 78,000 daily commuters of Wan Chai, where the artwork has its permanent residence, experience a dance story as they disembark. A life like meandering 220 metre narrative unfolds throughout the station. Dance has never been so subterranean.
Jevan has again thrown a spotlight on the visceral world of dance. He has done this in 21 other cities but here in Wan Chai for the first time, he has done it in the form of an enormous photographic story. Capturing the Hong Kong Ballet frozen in time, the story of the ‘Last Train’ is re-enacted by 40 principal, soloist, coryphée and corps de ballet dancers together with over 300 members of the public. ‘The Last Train’ later retitled ‘This is Wan Chai’ is designed to be viewed on the move.
The transformative ‘This is Wan Chai’ project initiated collaborations between 20+ partners including MTR, UK’s Department for International Trade, Hong Kong Design Centre, Conran + Partners, Royal Academy of Dance, Raffles Design Institute and Treacle Media among others. The complex arrangement of 65 artists and a 37 person production team was led by Wind & Foster.
It is an extremely successful placemaking project that brings dance to MTR to create a timeless piece of art and the results are enthralling. Most of us don’t have dance in our lives and when we do it’s as an audience. Moving Cities changes this. It shows us that cities like machines are not designed to stop, that everything constantly moves, and if you look hard enough there is a poetry in motion. All of us are part of this choreography. We all contribute to it and this is why it is quite novel to watch a dancer within it.
As clients in Barcelona, Dallas, Prague, Athens and recently in Hong Kong have discovered, pressing the Moving Cities button has a sort of magic unifying effect- it is an overwhelming positive process in and that’s why it keeps happening. As a cultural project it ticks boxes, but as a form of placemaking shining a spotlight on people first over iconic buildings, it feels so obvious and so right.
Translating the immediacy of dance into still art using the adrenalin of a non-stop city is a worthy treatment to realise but not easy. Beth Cinamon the Producer of the latest iteration of Moving Cities acknowledges that while buried up to her eyes in managing the global project, what keeps her going is the understanding that we are bringing dance choreography into people’s everyday lives.
Whether we watch it or do it, dance is the most present and conscious experience we have. It reminds us overwhelmingly of who we are. It is the physical definition of being alive and like any dancer will tell you it is the only way to be uncontrolled and ‘in the moment’.
It’s wordless and a new and emotive language sorely needed right now. In an age where algorithms are about to put us in boxes, we need to hang onto our breath and remember to dance more than click.
