16 & 17

The body is interconnected,

a universal language

T.Y.

We are not often afforded the chance to engage directly with contemporary artistic production from China. Yet some encounters suffice to recalibrate our perception of the body, of movement, and even of time itself. TAO Dance Company falls precisely into this rare category: one of the most iconic and trailblazing companies in contemporary dance, having conquered the world’s stages with a body language that is exacting, unadulterated, and unmistakably its own.

With the twofold work 16 & 17 – from the Numerical Series – founder Tao Ye distils his choreographic identity with staggering clarity. The two works serve simultaneously as dialogue and counterpoint, anchored in an inquiry that conceives body and mind as an indivisible continuum of flow and circularity. From this perspective arose the Circular Movement System, an original method that approaches movement as a field of perception and attentive inner observation.

In 16, sixteen bodies coalesce into a single pulse – a stream of energy that transforms before our eyes into a living organism. Rooted in Chinese cultural tradition, and more specifically in the spiralling, sinuous forms of the dragon and the snake as they appear in festive rituals, the dancers move in circular formations, with the head initiating a barely perceptible impulse that ripples through the entire body.

In 17, seventeen dancers are dispersed across the space, at times morphing into a group, at others existing as distinct units within a structure that appears random and unpredictable yet is governed by a deep internal coherence. From beginning to end, the sound emanating from the bodies themselves remains in constant synchrony with their movement, composing a world of tensions between sonic and somatic language. Like a song without voice, yet uncannily familiar, it stirs a paradoxical sensation that travels through the work in its entirety.

Awarded the Silver Lion for Dance at the Venice Biennale, Tao Ye is among those artists who, without courting spectacle, descend into the depths of the body’s inner architecture. It is precisely there that the allure of his work resides: in a dance that does not impose itself, yet quietly takes hold of you, wholly and quietly.