Choreographers Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu join forces in a new international collaboration entitled Deciphers.
Exploring U.K./Canada and Brazil/China cultural references – in particular poetry and vocal traditions from folk music – they explore how the body can be used as an extraordinary tool of linguistic expression. With their unique immigrant identities and perspectives, Naishi and Jean aim to create a transgressive physical poem in motion by deconstructing emotions, memories and sensations through poetry of the body in space.
The first phase of their creative process has been entirely virtual: sharing weekly exercises, discussions, inspirations and writings, along with a shared movement practice. Exchanges have been facilitated with dramaturg Guy Cools. Throughout this phase, new insights have developed into the different translation processes between languages – Mandarin, Portuguese, English – and also between bodies, with technology as mediator.
Naishi and Jean will meet live for the first time in February 2021 at the National Arts Centre.
“I seek to utilize the body as a tool to ask profound direct questions about the continual transforming nature of human identity.”
Jean Abreu
“Movement possesses a bodily linguistic identity, which also deciphered in terms of cultural influences: gestures of our ways of talking, our ways of walking, our ways of dancing, our ways of singing, and our ways of relating to the world around us.”
Naishi Wang
