Getting to Unbound
Wen Wei Wang's Life to Date

Photographer: Chris Randle

Dance entered my life at the age of five when I first saw a ballet performance in the industrial city of Xi'an, China, where I was born. I clearly remember a beautiful girl running away to a mountain where her hair turned white. Then a communist soldier found her and brought her back to her village. They fell in love. That was the first ballet I saw and I will always remember returning home to borrow my mother's white silk scarf to put around my head. Then I demonstrated in front of my family and friends most of the steps from the beautiful solo I had seen the white haired girl dance. After that some people called me a little girl, but I didn't mind.

Of course the ballet I saw was actually called The White Haired Girl. It was created during the Cultural Revolution. That ballet and another one, The Red Detachment of Women, were very popular at that time and are still revered in China . They were the first ballets created with a Chinese theme. Chairman Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, had a lot to do with the creation and promotion of these ballets which were used as propaganda for the communist regime. I had little awareness then of the politics involved. I just loved the dancing.

When I was very young I was a quiet person but I read a lot of books. My parents were both teachers and we lived at my mother's school. At that time in China families lived where they worked so my parents, two older sisters and I lived in one room of about 150 to 200 square feet. In that room we had one bed, a little bigger than a double bed, one table and two chairs. We also had a stove and wardrobe for our clothes. The only picture hanging on the wall was a portrait of Chairman Mao.

After my imitation of The White Haired Girl, word got around that I could dance. My parents had me show off my dancing to everyone who came to visit.

When I was six years old I was enlisted in a special performing arts residential school for talented youngsters. At that school, all the students learned Chinese dance, music and singing as well as a basic education. We were taught more of the dances from The White Haired Girl and The Red Detachment of Women than I already knew. My School was a Red Guard School. We spent a lot of time performing songs and dances that supported the Mao government's political philosophy. We performed for peasants, workmen, schools and army groups in many locations around Xi'an , including fields, halls and some big theatres. I still remember the words of one song that went something like this, "In the East the sun rises. In China we have Chairman Mao. He brings happiness to people's lives. From darkness into light, he is the sun."

Much of the dance training at the Red Guard School was folk dance. We performed one very popular dance at special occasions dressed in a green army uniform, an army hat, with a wide leather belt around our tunics. A red band was wrapped around our upper right arms and we carried Mao's red book in our hands. Special folk dance steps were performed together in a solid line and on the spot to symbolize our protection of Mao from his enemies. We would stamp our feet and gesture menacingly into thin air. Looking back on all this I can relate these experiences to some sequences of the current Lord of the Rings films.

I was considered to be the best dancer of the Red Guard School. As I was the star pupil, one of the school choreographers created a special piece for me and a young girl to perform wearing Tibetan costumes accompanied by a song expressing the Tibetan people's love for Mao. The steps and movement patterns were based on the folk dances of Tibet . The duet became so popular that all the elementary schools in Xi'an selected their top students to come to our school to learn it. My partner would teach the girls and I the boys. We stood on separate ping pong tables made of stone and demonstrated the steps for the hundred or so visiting students. That dance, which was created for me and my partner became the signature piece of the elementary schools in Xi'an .

I was thirteen years old when I auditioned for the Army Dance School located in Lanzhou , the capital city of the North West Territory of China. There were eight of these dance schools throughout China , all of them attached to army dance companies. It was official policy of the Mao regime that the army be an active presence in all aspects of Chinese society, including educational and cultural matters. The army was not just there to protect the people. I grew up believing in the wisdom of Mao. I always wanted to wear a uniform and have the honour of belonging to the army. Together with most people in China , I loved Mao. He was a god - and his teachings were like a religion.

When I attended the audition for entry into the school I was so nervous that during the preliminary physical inspection my blood pressure tested very high.

I was therefore not accepted. My mother managed to talk to the Director of the school to tell him how much I loved dance. After waiting a week I was told I could join the school. My family was so proud. Their only son was accepted into the army where he could study and perform dance.

A jury of five selected fifteen girls and fifteen men from all of China for entrance into the Lanzhou army dance school. Three boys and two girls were chosen from Xi'an . Those from my city first met each other on the eighteen hour train trip to Lanzhou . As we were all very young, some parents accompanied us. When we arrived we were driven by bus to the army school, which we found to be huge. The dance school and the dance company were housed in the same three buildings and shared the theatre, dance studios and cafeterias. I was given a room with four other boys in what was called the office building.

Our daily schedule at the army school began with a 6 am wake up, followed by a half hour run outdoors and a period of stretching before a breakfast of steamed bread and pickles (sometimes boiled eggs). From 8 am until noon we took a ballet class, followed by a boys' technique class to perfect our jumps, turns and special tricks. After lunch we had a much needed hour nap. Then we studied Folk and Classical Chinese dancing, alternating with repertory and other physical activities until 4 pm. After that we studied academic subjects such as languages, history and politics until the dinner break at 6 pm. From then until lights out at 10.30 pm, we did required homework, and occasionally attended movies or performances. The evenings were also times for the mandatory communist meetings.

During the four years before my graduation from the school in 1982, there were no summer breaks and we were not allowed to visit our homes. For a three month period our dance training and schooling was interrupted when we were sent to an army base outside Lanzhou for military training to learn how to fire a gun and be real soldiers. At the end of this intense training experience I was accepted into the Lanzhou Army Dance Company and became a principal dancer.

It was during this period of my dance career that I and my teacher Chen Ling were invited to Canada on a five month cultural exchange with China . I arrived in Vancouver in 1986 to perform with the Lorita Leung Chinese dance company.

Chen Ling taught classes at the Lorita Leung school. Coming to Canada was a cultural shock for me. From only wanting to be a good communist soldier I quickly realized my eyes had been wide shut. I found another dream that did not include Mao.

Chen Ling and I flew to Vancouver via San Francisco . It was my first flight experience. It was also the first time I tasted cheese which I found really awful. This was in March but we were wearing winter clothes and were surprised to see people walking in sandals when we landed in San Francisco . I also remember seeing a woman walking her dog which was something I had never seen before. I felt as if I had climbed out from under a rock. Neither of us could speak any English but were fortunate enough to meet some local Chinese people who helped us onto the plane headed for Vancouver .

When the plane touched down we thought we had arrived at our destination so we followed people off the plane to the luggage area to discover our luggage was not there. We then met a Chinese couple who explained we were not in Vancouver , we were in Seattle and the plane we had just left had already taken off for Vancouver . The Chinese couple kindly took us to their home, fed us and got us back to the airport just in time to catch the last plane out of Seattle to Vancouver . We were met late at night by our very worried hosts.

Driving into the city from the airport I was amazed to see such wide streets, the cherry trees in bloom, green grass everywhere, the magnificence of the mountains and the houses, which looked something like houses I had seen in cartoon books in China. Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs came to mind. I felt I was in heaven, I never knew a place could be so beautiful.

During my stay in Vancouver I met Grant Strate for the first time. He had just returned from a sabbatical trip to Asia Pacific where he had taught some ballet classes at the Beijing Dance Academy . I attended the ballet classes he taught at the Dance Gallery in downtown Vancouver .

Lorita Leung asked him to choreograph a solo for me which he did despite the fact that I spoke no English and he spoke no Chinese. But somehow the language barrier did not matter as we understood each other through dance which has its own language. He was my first contact with a western choreographer. The solo he created for me was very difficult and physically demanding. At the end of one long and exhausting rehearsal he asked me to repeat it for a third time. I instantly and emphatically said "No", which I believe was the first time I spoke an English word.

When I left Vancouver I knew I was a very changed person. Mao was no longer a god. My eyes were opened. On the plane, I remember wishing that time would stop so I would not have to return to China .

I came back to China a changed person, more aware of the vibrant world outside my own country. I already felt that life and a career with the Lanzhou PLA Company would be limiting. Nonetheless, I managed to get back into the swing of things and continued to extend my ideas and ambitions. In 1988, the Lanzhou local television station sponsored a choreographic competition, which I and my dance partner entered. Together we created and performed a duet called Love Song and received first prize, which was a colour television set. At that time in China , such an item was worth more than a year's average salary. The PLA Company was very impressed by this achievement, so the two of us invited a number of people from the company to a celebration dinner. From that point on, company officials saw us in a different light and highly recommended us to be the only representatives from the company to attend China 's first and only choreographic program to offer a university degree in choreography. This program was to be newly founded as part of the already existing Beijing PLA Art Academy .

Notice of this choreographic program was sent out to my company in January of 1988, with a listing of the prerequisites for entry. One of these was the academic standing required for all university programs. Because academic studies in both the Red Army School and the Lanzhou PLA Dance School had taken second place to dancing and performing, there was much catching up for me to do. From then on until the end of May, when high school exams were scheduled, I worked very hard at my studies in my free time while still rehearsing and dancing with the Lanzhou Company.

Auditions for the choreographic program took place over two days in Beijing in April. This was at the time when students were demonstrating for more freedom of expression, which led to the tragic incidents at Tienaman Square on June 4.

Of course there was no talk about this at the army academy and I was too preoccupied with the audition process to pay much attention anyway.

On the first day of the audition I was required to participate in ballet and Chinese classical dance classes with the other candidates. We were told to blindly choose one of three pieces of taped music and a title for a 5 minute solo from a prepared list. We had two hours to choreograph a solo based on this information, after which it was performed in front of the jury.

Following all this we were asked to prepare a written scenario for a dance piece, to be discussed with the jury during an interview the next day. After I returned to Lanzhou I received notice that I had been accepted, contingent on successfully passing my academic examinations. Lucky me! I passed.

My university student life began September 1st. The dancers and choreographers who were in the first year of the new choreographic program were from all parts of China .. They had been stars in their own companies and brought a lot of talent into the mix. Some had won prestigious competitions and were well known in the dance field. I felt this to be an exciting step up for me. It coincided with the realization that I really wanted to be a choreographer. Most of the students of this program have ended up as choreographers and directors of dance companies in China . It was a fairly elite group.

The program was quite intense and in many ways opened windows into the western world. Apart from academic studies consistent with university standards, we did a lot of physical work. Daily dance classes were essential. Different local and visiting choreographers came to talk to us. We saw a number of videos of the works of such choreographers as Martha Graham, George Balanchine and Maurice Bejart. The choreographic process included the giving of assignment to be completed, viewed and discussed. Subjects for dance were mostly about Chinese life, love stories, army heroism and peasant liberation in line with the political climate of China . The window to the west was only open a crack when we got down to Chinese themes.

Academic subjects included History of Dance, English (everyone had to take these classes and most of them were terrible), Writing, Film, Music (mostly piano).

In 1990, Grant Strate was invited to teach and choreograph a work for the Beijing Dance Academy, which existed only a few blocks from the PLA Academy .

He was therefore asked to visit students of the academy and to show videotapes he had brought with him. I was particularly impressed by the work Stomping Ground by Jiri Kylian. He was also asked by the Director of the academy to look at some of the students choreography and to give comments. He was in a difficult spot because everyone was waiting to be congratulated, but he managed to speak truthfully, mentioning cultural differences between the west and China , without offending anyone. He spoke about "abstraction", which was difficult for us to understand.

Photographer: Chris Randle

He also tried to explain the meaning of "modern dance" when asked for a definition. Everyone wanted an exact answer. He said it was a more of a philosophy than a technique and that was also difficult for us to understand.

I spoke to Grant about my real interest in studying modern dance. He invited me to come to Canada to attend the Summer Dance Intensive of the Centre for the Arts at Simon University . Among the teachers there would be Peggy Baker and Serge Bennathan, leaders of contemporary dance in Canada . As he was the Director of the Centre for the Arts he could send me an official invitation to attend. This letter proved to be my gateway to the west. It was very difficult to leave China . In order to do this I had to quit the PLA Arts Academy before graduation. Had I finished the course I would have been legally obligated to work within China for five years as everything had been paid for by the government. I returned to Lanzhou and asked the director of my company there for permission to leave the country. His answer was "No", but he was sympathetic to my request. China was just beginning to open its borders and somehow I eventually received the green light. This meant I had to quit my job and lose all the benefits that went with it.

So I returned to Xi'an and applied for a passport. It took half a year to obtain my passport in the spring of 1991. The SFU course was to begin in June so there was very little time to get a student visa from Canada . Through Grant's contacts I was invited by the Canadian Ambassador and his wife to attend a social event at their home. To my surprise they asked me to dance for them. I did!! It worked, and I received my visa just in time.

I arrived in Vancouver on June 2nd in a very different frame of mind than when I visited in 1986. I knew more about the white western world but there was much more to be learned. Grant met me at the airport and invited me to stay at his house until I was able to find my own place. On my second day in Canada I went to an audition for the Judith Marcuse Dance Company. It was at the Dance Gallery which was familiar territory. I was surprised when Judith approached me after the audition class and asked me if I would be interested in joining her group. As the company was not scheduled to begin until after the end of the SFU summer course, this arrangement worked well for me, so I said yes.

My first class at SFU was with Peggy Baker. I had never before seen a female dancer with such a strong, muscular, beautiful and long body. I was not able to take my eyes off her and therefore could not remember her movements and steps which were new to me. The first exercise at the barre had me standing in a turned in parallel position that pained my hips. But I loved her fascinating movement even though I found it so difficult to do.

My next class was Grant's ballet class which was more familiar to me because of the classes I had taken with him in 1986. His classes were very different than the ballet classes I had taken in China . They were difficult but challenging, not just for the body but also for the mind. From my point of view, his class was fresh and liberating.

In the afternoon I joined Serge Bennathan's choreography class, in which he was creating a new work for the participants. At the beginning he taught us some steps I thought I danced well but he did not cast me in the work.

Possibly I was not the right type for his choreography. Everything was new to me. It was not just the steps that got in my way but also my inability to speak much English. So I sat in the corner and just watched the rehearsals and somehow learned more that way than if I had been in the piece.

The SFU Dance Intensive bombarded me with new ideas and movements that helped prepare me for Judith Marcuse's company. Even so, I found the circumstances for a contemporary Canadian company extremely different than those that existed in the company I danced with in China . That company was typical of most performing arts companies in my country. It had approximately 300 members, including dancers, singers, musicians, designers, a wardrobe staff and a medical clinic. Judith's company was made up of 10 dancers who worked in a rented space on Main Street until it burned down and then we moved to the Polish Hall on Fraser Street . Now I am used to these conditions but at the time I was a little shocked. In time, this did not seem important as I enjoyed the work and the people I worked with. My poor English was not too much of a problem, as dance was an international language, we were able to communicate well through movement. Whenever I did not understand, I just said Yes! Yes!

Yes!

During my two years with this company we toured across Canada , from Vancouver to Halifax . I had the opportunity of seeing many parts of this vast country.

The landscape was so amazing. Touring conditions were much better than they were with my company in China , where we travelled on crowded trains and shared hotel rooms with 4 or 5 other dancers. The Canadian tours were also times to get to know the dancers better. We became close friends. My time with Judith's company was a wonderful beginning for me. I danced in many of her works and this provided me with a solid bridge into the future. A high point for me was the opportunity to choreograph a group work for a choreographic workshop sponsored by the company. The dancers and others from the Vancouver community were able to see what I could do and this was a small beginning, but a beginning into my later career as a choreographer.

There were lay-off times with the company, as I soon found out was the case for most dance companies. During one of these, I kept in shape by taking ballet classes with Ballet British Columbia . When John Alleyne became the new artistic director of the company I auditioned for him but this was at a time when there were no opening for new dancers. A year later John saw me dance with the Judith Marcuse Company and he then offered me a contract. Entrance into Ballet B.C. was an important step upward for me. I spent 7 years with this company and danced in the ballets of many established choreographers as well as in several works created by John Alleyne. The others included William Forsythe, John Cranko, Jiri Kylian, Serge Bennathan, James Kudelka and Mark Godden. At one point, Peter Bingham, a leading teacher and choreographer of contact improvisation, collaborated with Alleyne on a dance piece that opened my eyes to other approaches to choreography.

In the off seasons with Ballet B.C., I dance with other Vancouver choreographers, including Lola Maclaughlin, Paras Terezakis and Jennifer Mascall. It seems there was never a time since arriving in Canada that I was not teaching at various local dance schools. My reason for this was mainly to earn a better income but I also liked teaching. Through my teaching I was invited to choreograph several works for students. My reputation as a choreographer began to gain momentum through commissions received from schools, the main one being the Dance Program of Arts Umbrella. Another stepping stone was provided through the invitation to create a dance for the Ballet B.C. Mentor Program.

Because of all this creative experience over a fairly short period of time, I won the Clifford E. Lee Award for Choreography in the year 2000. The award gave me the opportunity to choreograph a large ballet called Snow for the Banff Summer Program. With this work my career as a choreographer turned an important corner. However, even then I did not feel it was the product of my own voice but rather a summation of the various influences I had been exposed to through my whole life as a dancer. Still it was a fine experience, one that gave me the confidence and courage to move ahead as a maker of dances.

Since then I have created a number of works. Each one brought me closer along the road to my ideal destination, that being the realization of my dream to be known as a choreographer with a strong personal voice. Chief among these works was Tao, a full length dance to the music of Giorgio Magnanensi, a contemporary composer, originally from Italy , who has an appreciation of aspects of oriental music. With Tao I gained the confidence to be myself, to speak from the roots of my being. Two solo pieces followed; One Man's... and One + One and these reminded me of how much I love to dance. After Tao I formed my own company. With this background and the positive responses I was receiving for my choreography I was beginning to feel fairly confident but was nonetheless surprised to receive the 2006 CanDance commission for a major work to be premiered at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa , to be followed by a tour of major Canadian cities.

With the CanDance commission, I had the opportunity to extend my movement ideas and vision for dance. I have always seen dance as a universal art form, able to communicate through movement to anyone, anywhere at any time. Dance relates to the human condition without words. Dance is its own language and that is my language.

Even so, I still depend on the subconscious memory of all I have learned from my years in China and Canada . The person I am now is from both of these countries, but beyond that I hope to make statements that are universal, recognizing borders while going beyond them.

For the first time in my life I have the opportunity to spend time researching a work, to be able to experiment and prepare for the final product. Although I already had a reputation for creating at the speed of light, I knew it was time for me to slow down, to dig deeper into the content of choreography.

Providing the movement frame has always been the easy part for me. Now I apply more attention to the reasons for moving.

I am fortunate to have an excellent team of dancers and to have had the time to prepare them for the technical skills and the expressive understanding required for the new work. We spent a period together working with William Lau to understand subtleties of Chinese Opera movement. They have also learned Tai Chi movement. I continued to collaborate with composer, Giorgio Magnanensi.

This is my fourth time working with him and I find our artistic objectives are completely compatible.

My new work is called "Unbound". It was first inspired by the beautiful silk shoes used by the Beijing Opera to simulate the bound feet of Chinese women of an earlier period. William Lau had brought several pairs of these with him for his workshop. When I grew up in China , there were still women, including my grandmother, whose feet were bound in the old Chinese tradition. My mom told me of her own experience as a child of four or five when her parents began the long process of binding her feet to the shape and size considered to be the ideal for women of social standing. She told me it was so painful and she complained so much that she was finally spared the ordeal. She was fortunate to be born at a time when Chinese attitudes towards women's bound feet began to change.

While I was in China , before coming to Canada , I didn't think too much about bound feet, regarding it as a custom of the distant past. Several years later, when I was attending a Choreographic Workshop sponsored by Ballet Jorgen in Toronto , I visited the Bata Shoe Museum , probably because I have always had a fascination for shoes. At that time the Museum featured a special historical exhibition of shoes designed for bound feet. The exhibition notes explained that the bound feet were sexually attractive to Chinese men of the past, who wanted their women to be decorative rather than just house wives. The smaller their feet, the more beautiful they were considered to be. The exhibition was illustrated by a collection of various shoe styles, textures and colours. Some were covered with flowered silk patterns. There were also some shoes with heels.

As a part of the research required for the new work commissioned by the CanDance Network, I arranged for a Chinese Opera Workshop with William Lau, specifically for the benefit of myself and company members. William brought with him several pairs of shoes worn by Chinese Opera performers to make their feet appear to be bound. The are called 3 Inch Golden Lotus Shoes. I asked my female dancers to try these on and dance in them. I became fascinated by the way they moved. The centre of balance was changed considerably which required me to choreograph in a very different way to allow the dancers to retain their equilibrium.

Without conscious reference to male/female relationships, I proceeded in a purely abstract way to compose a work for three men and three women in various combinations of gender. The shoes became the symbol of beauty not only for the women but also frequently crossing the border into male territory. From then on, my abstract intentions gave way to inevitable human relationships, emotions and sexuality. In a way, the piece seemed to change on its own from "bound" to "unbound".