Zuhe Niao

TONGUE’S MEMORY OF HOME

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27, 28 NOV 8.30 pm

PALLADIUM

National Premiere
In times of complacent interest for cultural, ethnic, national and religious roots, Zhang Xian and Zuhe Niao (the Niao Collective) tackle the theme of identity from a very different perspective: five performers bring on stage the asymmetry between group attitude and personal liberty, in a show where choreography, video, and poetry entwine in a contemporary poetic dimension.
“Tongue’s memory of home” is inspired from a number of poems by Lu Yimin and Wang Yin, poets today forgotten in China but who in the 1980s were as popular as much as they were obstinately banned by the Beijing regime. In a society where poetry is considered dangerous, each person’s tongue becomes a tool for one collective voice, to make people bit by bit forget what gives them their own individuality.
But a tongue, once stripped of language, has other ways of remembering – tasting, touching, feeling. Stripped of language, it is no longer a mouthpiece for ideology and is in fact more free than human beings themselves. By drawing on other senses the tongue can inspire the body to dream of other worlds, between dream and reality, and give us another memory of home.
Boycotted in his country even by the present government, Zhang Xian is the author of “The Politics of Chinese Dissident Drama“, a touching account on the relationship between theatre and political power in China that is available on the Internet.

Zuhe Niao (”The Niao Collective”) is a constantly evolving collective composed of professional and non-professional dancers. Together with video artists, actors and designers they have given life to a form of art called “physical theatre”. In 2006 Zuhe Niao won the ZKB award at the Zuercher Theater Spektakel.
Zhang Xian, author and director, is an important figure in the Shanghai scene, working in the avant-garde theatre since several years. He contributes with his charisma to this new theatre form that is now spreading in Shanghai, where it has often been censored.

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