A preview piece explaining the whys and wherefores of performing Connect Transfer in Walt Disney Concert Hall:
Shen Wei: Paint meets danceLaura Bleiberg, Orange County Register
If a dancer spends any time at all thinking about the floor on which he will perform, it's generally in the context of safety. Dancers want a flat, solid and cushioned stage to avoid bodily injury.
Those are concerns, too, for Chinese-born, contemporary choreographer and dancer Shen Wei, leader of the 14-member Shen Wei Dance Arts. But Shen, also a trained painter, views the wide-open floor with the longing of an artist. For him, it is something closer to a canvas, beckoning to be filled. And so in his 2004 dance "Connect Transfer," that's what Shen did – he put canvas on the floor and devised a way for his 14 dancers to deposit pigment on it in the act of dancing. The dance and the resulting painting are an unusual exploration and collision of movement and image.
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