Near the Terrace and Folding, two of the most acclaimed productions by dancer, choreographer and visual artist Shen Wei, will be performed this September by his eponymous dance company in five cities including Nanjing in Jiangsu province, Shanghai and Wuhan in Hubei province.
Shen was lead choreographer for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He choreographed Scroll Painting, in which dancers performed against a constantly changing LED backdrop of ink-and-wash paintings that depicted the historical evolution of China.
In 2000, he came up with Near the Terrace and Folding while he was exploring the connection between everyday movement and the different sensibilities of dance techniques and performance. He drew inspiration from the work of Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux.
The same year, he founded his dance company, Shen Wei Dance Arts. Since then, the company has performed in 138 cities in 33 countries, and has also made appearances at festivals.
Born into a family of opera professionals in Hunan province in 1968, Shen trained as a child to become a Chinese opera performer and learned Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. As a student, he studied Western visual arts, which sparked an interest in modern dance.
In 1989, he began training in modern dance at the American Dance Festival's program at the Guangdong Dance Academy. In 1991, he became a founding member of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, then moved to New York in 1995. In 2022, he was honored with an American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement.
