Beijing hosts meeting of arts from East and West

Poster for Circle, Rupture [Photo/www.beijingldtx.com]

As one of the highlights of this year's Croisements Festival, the contemporary dances Circle and Rupture were staged in Beijing on Sunday, combining arts of the East and West.

The 40-minute original dance Rupture was created and performed by Cameroonian artist Abbe Simon. The show is also called "Duo for one dancer", recounting the discovery and fragility of love through body language.

Simon started hip-hop dancing in 1998 and he and his team "Black Star" won the Cameroon city dance competition four consecutive times. In 2009 he joined the French Xavier Lot Dance Workshop which has wide collaborations with groups in Europe, Asia and Africa. Three years later he established Abbe Dance Company in China with his wife, Chinese dancer Jiang Keyu. His important works includes Carcass, Until When?, Dian Dian and The Feeling of Boday Moving.

Circle, a 30-minute contemporary dance created by Chinese artist Zi Wei explores an attitude of living, pursuing the purity beyond the restrictions of social rules and customs. The work creates a vacuum where the way of living and love are re-examined.

Zi is a dancer and choreographer from BeijingDance/LDTX group. He started his career at Erdos' Song and Dance Troupe in Inner Mongolia in 1998 and joined the Beijing Modern Dance Company in 2000. Five years later he was a founding member of the LDTX group. He has presented his works in more than 20 countries and representative works include Drift, The Pseudo Eagle, Segment, Very Slow, Circle, Wind in the Sky and Long Melody.

The Croisements Festival is organized by the French Embassy in Beijing. The annual event has attracted more than 8 million visitors since its founding in 2006.