8
Created in 2015
Choreography | Tao Ye
Music | Xiao He
Lightning Design | Ma Yue，Tao Ye
Costume Design | Duan Ni，Tao Ye，Li Min
Duration｜45 min
Premiere | 23 Oct 2015, Shanghai International Arts Festival,China
Co-commission | Shanghai International Arts Festival,China / Sadler's Wells Theater London, UK / Aian Art Theater Gwangju, Korea / National Taichung Theater
"8", a work by TAO Dance Theater, is the final installment of the choreographer and founder Tao Ye's "Straight Line Trilogy". Following "6" and "7", this piece continues his "Numerical Series" creative concept, exploring the aesthetic possibilities of the body under constraints through the excavation of movement logic and repetitive processes. The music for this work is once again composed and arranged by musician Xiao He.
In Tao Ye's previous two works, the dancers stood in a straight line formation with equal spacing throughout, using unified group movements to evoke a sense of coordination and vitality through collective consciousness. In this process, each dancer needed extreme concentration to complete neat, continuous movements, presenting a repetitive ritual of natural order. In "8", all dancers will continue to demonstrate consumption and process accumulation through synchronized breathing while standing side by side.
The difference between this work and others in the series is that it adds another dancer, further expanding the inclusiveness of the dance chain due to increased volume. In terms of form, the dancers also change from standing to lying on their backs, with their limbs further restricted to the ground. The range of movement is limited to what the spine can do, and the dancers' field of vision changes from a 360-degree circumference when standing to 180 degrees in a lying position. However, under these constraints, the dancers' physical abilities are also excavated and released. From the audience's frontal perspective, this dance eliminates the dancers' full body from head to toe, leaving only the focus on their torsos. In the fluid dance of the 8 dancers moving like mobile sculptures, humans use their own spines to break through flat barriers, showing miniature changes through their bodies.
In Tao Ye's previous two works, the dancers stood in a straight line formation with equal spacing throughout, using unified group movements to evoke a sense of coordination and vitality through collective consciousness. In this process, each dancer needed extreme concentration to complete neat, continuous movements, presenting a repetitive ritual of natural order. In "8", all dancers will continue to demonstrate consumption and process accumulation through synchronized breathing while standing side by side.
The difference between this work and others in the series is that it adds another dancer, further expanding the inclusiveness of the dance chain due to increased volume. In terms of form, the dancers also change from standing to lying on their backs, with their limbs further restricted to the ground. The range of movement is limited to what the spine can do, and the dancers' field of vision changes from a 360-degree circumference when standing to 180 degrees in a lying position. However, under these constraints, the dancers' physical abilities are also excavated and released. From the audience's frontal perspective, this dance eliminates the dancers' full body from head to toe, leaving only the focus on their torsos. In the fluid dance of the 8 dancers moving like mobile sculptures, humans use their own spines to break through flat barriers, showing miniature changes through their bodies.