“6” & “7”

Distant China is a world unto itself and only rarely do examples of its contemporary culture find their way out to us. Now, the Onassis Stegi brings us a Chinese choreographer who has conquered the world’s stages in recent years with his minimalist choreographies that invite the audience to envision and commune on a profound level with the work unfolding before their eyes.

Tao Ye rejects any attempts to harness his work to narrative, which is why he numbers his choreographies rather than naming them. Numbers “6” and “7” were choreographed one after the other, but are presented here as a single work. “6” takes us into a dark world: six black-clad dancers emerge out of a foggy landscape resembling smog-choked Beijing. They start moving with one ‘voice’, treading the ground firmly and dancing—chiefly with the upper part of their bodies—a ritualistic dance which stretches the human body to the very limits of its flexibility. An equally minimalist soundtrack and the exceptional lighting design of Sweden’s Ellen Ruge, a close collaborator of Mats Ek, who has done a lot of high-profile work here in Greece, complete the raw materials of this performance-experience.

If we see “6” as Yin, then “7” is Yang, a ‘reversed’, almost deconstructed, reading of the same material. This time, the six dancers emerge dressed in white against a demystifyingly white backdrop. The choreography is almost identical to that of 6, but this time the sound is produced by the dancers’ bodies, creating a musical composition by Tao Ye himself. Their breathing, sounds, bodies compose a landscape which is the same but different. In this repositioning of a work we have already seen, the work reveals a singular artist.