Wang Mei, Creative Style Of Dance

Wang Mei is one of the dancers who firstly studied and choreographed modern dance in the 1980s in China. In 1991, she established modern dance education in Beijing Dance Academy, and has been training a lot of professional dancers by her own perspective ever since. In the past 20 years, Chinese modern dance has moved from the edge of being pressed to the center. Wang Mei considers herself as a master of Chinese modern dance, and compares herself to Béjart Maurice in France .The special historical context and her strong self-consciousness have made a strong influence on the development and future of Chinese modern dance.The following essay focuses on four of Wang Mei's characteristic works. By means of intensive reading, psychoanalysis, and comparison, we study Wang Mei's choreography from three levels: the relationship between physical and mental performances, the expression of"ego"in her work and the way she deals with tradition and modernity. The analysis indicates that all the multifarious languages in her work, elite or popular, traditional or modern, elegant or vulgar, can be included in her imagination and practice of"Chinese"modern dance. In these works, she links"China"from two perspectives——using complete,specific body display to break the form of Western Pure Dance, and transforming traditional aesthetic feelings into present experience, in the hope of continuing the traditions of Chinese dance ,so as to find the justification for the origination of Chinese modern dance . At the same time, she closely inspects the inside world of"ego", following the freedom,impulse and fantasy of"ego"to establish the world in her works. And the unceasing"negation"gives her the impetus to express the present time, thus keeping the modernity of dance.However, Wang Mei's choreography is also faced with a crisis. under the"progressive"trend of today, Chinese modern dance has not escaped its cultural destiny of"traditional modernity": Step by step it falsely validates the route of Western modern dance. What's special about Wang Mei's works is the evident revolt position in her multi-narrating of approval and revolt to this cultural destiny. But, in which direction will Wang Mei's creation and Chinese modern dance be going? Obviously, in order to solve the anxiety this problem has evoked, we cannot limitedly turn to the ever-new form and blindly depend on the cultural resources. Only through returning to the life itself, establishing the genuine relationships among Chinese modern dance, China's society and Chinese audiences, can we find a brand new meaning of life and create outstanding works of art.