17

Created in 2024

Choreography | Tao Ye

Music|Xiao He

Lightning Design | Tao Ye, Dong Huoliang

Costume Design | DNTY

Duration|25 min

Premiere | 24 Aug 2024 , SHANGYIN OPERA HOUSE , Shanghai ,China

Co-production | La Biennale di Venezia

With the support of | Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels

The body is interconnected, a universal language.

As the sixteenth Numerical series work in his choreographic cultivation, he continues the audio-visual experiment from his dialogue work '7', exploring the relationship between sound patterns and physical movement.

The 17 dancers, scattered or gathered, appear chaotic yet ordered. Throughout the performance, sound becomes the trigger for all movement - the fall of sound, its diffusion, and its astonishment... The sound patterns synchronize with physical movement, creating a game of two corresponding languages - bizarre, hybrid, and unconventional relationships. It resembles both visualized sound waves and spinning fireworks.

For the choreographer, sound waves and lines are not only auditory but also physical. The inspiration for '17' comes from the imagination of sound kinesthesia - a song with words yet without language, a strangely familiar phrase. This contradictory sense of nearness and distance permeates the entire work.