A queer feminist anthropologist exploring the realities of culture, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Asia
A morning at Beijing Dance / LDTX Studios It’s the first rainy day since my arrival in Beijing. I am met, somewhat sodden, at Dawanglu station by a young Chinese woman named Jade. Clutching our umbrellas, exchange our thoughts about London, the city we’ve both left recently, and Beijing, where we’re both newly living. Jade [...]
Hofesh Shechter Company's In Good Company It’s not often that dancers are given free reign to create new works of their own, and even rarer that they get all the support necessary to make fully-realised, successful pieces. That’s why In Good Company, the project enabling dancers of the Hofesh Shechter Company to present their own [...]
Weighty, abstract and astounding: Tao Dance Theatre’s 4 and 5 Hypnotic, enthralling and undeniably special: bodies ebb and flow with the tide of change in Chinese choreographer Tao Ye’s 4 and 5. These are just two parts in a series of abstract works that “explore the potential of the human body as a visual element, [...]
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's challenging Vortex Temporum Dancers whirl through dark space, crossing paths, each following their own axes as they run at full speed along pre-drawn lines like ebullient planets. A deconstruction of the relationship between dance and music, Vortex Temporum is an engaging work, both powerfully engaging and lightly playful. This week saw [...]
I recently made a major decision that will change my life. Since then, other parts of my life have really improved. Everything around me has taken on the glisten of wonderment that I hadn’t seen there previously. So, its probably about time I told the world. Or, at least, those in it who don’t already [...]
Burns, Baby, Burns... Last weekend I survived a bit of an ordeal. I’d been invited to an academic event hosted and attended by various people I’ve admired from afar and never met before - the kind of people I quoted in my dissertation, whose plays I studied at university, and who might be the help [...]
When it comes to hair removal, I am (to my immense irritation) unrelentingly hypocritical. It's something I've got strong views on but haven't always stuck to my beliefs in my own personal habits. On the surface, I believe it's a waste of time, money and sense. It goes right against my feminist beliefs. Knowing that [...]
"How relevant is Shakespeare?" is one of those questions that crops up a lot. Particularly during a Theatre degree. The majority of contemporary Shakespeare productions I've seen have made the story, the characters, the language somehow relevant to modern life. From Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet to Ong Keng Sen's intercultural Asian Shakespeare series [...]
Puffball really got me thinking. Here's why: CircusFest 2014: Puffball at The Roundhouse Contorted, standing on a trapeze and wrapped entirely in cling film, a scantily-clad male figure tears his way out of his plastic chrysalis with a rush of red fluid. This womb-like, visceral allusion to ‘coming out of the closet’, to forging a [...]
Seeing Headspace Dance for the first time, I was in two minds about how much I liked them. As performers, they were wonderful. But I wasn't fully convinced by some of the artistic choices made. Before The Interval made some interesting post-modernist observations about dance, and it had some entertaining moments, but I wasn't enthralled [...]
Zhēn de Gender 