From all of our research for the work we did in Hong Kong, the one thing we did not know before arriving was that "Tong Chong" literally translates as "sugar cube." So, our piece was "Strangers on Sugar Cube Street." It was a nice affirmation of our choices for a sugary color palette, and a gesture vocabulary and comedic references to sugar--and audiences in Hong Kong responded strongly to this, recognizing our connection to the site's history as part of the TaiKoo sugar industry.
Below are three video clips, representing the whole of the work, from Gofella.com (please be patient while content loads):
This completes or series of blog entries for this project. We will begin another series soon. Meanwhile, keep up-to-date on our activities at our official website: www.thirdrailprojects.com, and thanks for reading and sharing this experience with us.
At one point
while running "Strangers on Tong Chong Street," during our many rehearsals, maneuvering around local
pedestrian traffic on their way to work in order to walk through a glass door, I looked at Liz and said with complete satisfaction, "this is my life right
now."Choosing a creative path in
life, I find that I often have these moments when I am tickled (and at times
relieved) by the fact that I get to do things that are normal to me, yet completely
absurd to most people. I relished moments like this even more so as they
happened on the other side of the world, so far from my own daily routine, and
so close to the daily routine of another culture. Geography aside,
the striking duality of blatant contrasts and unifying commonalities of this
experience in comparison to any other project I have been involved in,
site-specific work especially, has left its residue on me now that we are back
in New York.Behind the
scenes -- amongst ourselves, our colleagues from L.A, the directors of the Youth Arts Foundation, the production crew, the students performing -- there was the same
excited buzz, and sincere investment similar to the energy behind any artistic
endeavor.This in itself created a
warm-fuzzy, its-a-small-world-after-all feeling.On the presentational side, it was quite unique to be a part
of something that was so brand new to the space we were in, and to the
audiences that were witnessing the festival.
It has been exactly one week since we performed in Hong Kong, and everywhere we look, photos and video clips of our work are popping up, all over YouTube, FaceBook, and the many photo websites. It's not surprising, really, how quickly and how many of these are surfacing, considering that so many audience members at the festival viewed the performances through video, camera, or cell phone lenses. For all the similarities we discovered between Hong Kong and New York, one difference was evident, the patterns of group movement and the way in which audiences experience public performances.
The first half of "Strangers on Tong Chong Street"
Zach noted within our first week in Hong Kong that he felt that the crowds there shifted like puzzle pieces, all trying to move ahead by moving side to side and forward, especially in the MTR. In the New York subway system, crowds tend to push straight ahead in a linear fashion, even when weaving. The differences felt subtle in the first week when we were navigating our way around Hong Kong, but they became overt for us once we moved into performing dance in a public space.
For the beginning of the piece, we had originally toyed with the idea of soliciting a few friends in Hong Kong to follow our entrance onto Tong Chong Street, snapping photographs of us as if we were arriving superstars. We abandoned that idea a long time back, but we were surprised to find that not only did the cameras go off constantly during the entirety of our performances, they did so right in our faces. Crowds in Hong Kong have no qualms about pushing to the front and getting as close to the subject as possible. In fact, many a camera lens was almost shattered by a foot in the face. We did our best not to injure anyone (successfully), but we also had to fight for space to dance, frequently directing people out of the way with additional movement or, in some cases, actually physically moving people.
Here's a couple of press items we'd like to share. First, is a program from Daily Motion, performances clips from the Urban Dance Festival in Hong Kong, featuring our new site-specific work, "Strangers on Tong Chong Street," as well as CDT and local Hong Kong youth groups.
And following, is a list of questions we were asked for U Magazine in an interview we did prior to arrival in Hong Kong. The online and hard copy version is printed in Chinese, so we have provided the English version below for our readers.
The following questions are answered by Tom Pearson and Zach Morris,
Co-Artistic Directors of Third Rail Projects and choreographers of "Strangers on Tong Chong Street," and Mayuna Shimizu, a founding member
of Third Rail Projects who has performed in works by Tom and Zach since
1999.
(1) Could you say a few words about what site-specific dancing means to you?
Zach: For us, site-specific dance is about getting art out of the
theater and gallery and putting it into the public realm, about using
performance to illuminate urban space which is often taken for granted
or overlooked. It's an opportunity for art to really engage with "real
world" architecture, topography, environments, and most importantly,
the communities who inhabit them.
Donna Ahmadi performing in "Strangers on Tong Chong Street"
Now that we are all back home, the next few blog entries will focus on follow-up thoughts and media from the performances of "Strangers on Tong Chong Street" in Hong Kong. The piece was created and performed by Tom Pearson and Zach Morris for the Swire Island East Urban Dance Festival in collaboration with and also performed by: Donna Ahmadi, Elizabeth Carena, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Tara O'Con, and Mayuna Shimizu. Original music was composed by Kris Bauman, and costumes were designed by Zach Morris and created in consultation with Karen Young.
Our last entry, "Interpretations" touched briefly on the issue of qualifying site-specific dance for our audiences, press, sponsors, etc while in HK. This was the first ever festival to feature site-specific dance in Hong Kong and required quite a bit of frame work and an educational component to explain the series. The Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation, partnering with Swire Properties did an exhaustive interpretation campaign, featuring program notes, an installation display with explanation and video clips, online audio tours, and announcements at the pre-event cocktail in order to clarify for audiences what they were about to experience. Zach and I were brought over early to teach master classes in site-specific dance composition to local artists. We appreciated the research that the presenters put into this (not to mention bravery in undertaking a festival of this sort) and the framework they devised for the event, and we want to share below the audio tour for our work and what I think is a wonderful explanation of site work for the audiences in Hong Kong (from the program notes).
Zach Morris, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus (flanked by Mayuna Shimizu and Donna Ahmadi), and Elizabeth Carena in "Strangers on Tong Chong Street"
Yesterday, we performed our first full run-thru of "Strangers on Tong Chong Street." TVB 8 sent their crew to film, and afterwards Zach and I were interviewed for the feature they are airing on their arts and leisure program this coming Thursday. You can check local listings and programming on their website: http://www.tvb.com/tvb8/b5/. The program will air throughout China, Australia, and Europe.
We are discovering for audiences and press alike, there is quite a bit of context and interpretation needed to qualify site-specific work and explain its role within the larger worldwide dance scene. It becomes evident from the questions we are asked that site-specific dance is often assumed to be a dance form itself, akin to modern, hip-hop, jazz, or ballet. We first have to explain that any of these forms can provide the movement vocabulary for a site-specific work, and that to work on site simply means that the choreographer engages with the existing architecture and topography of an area. Often we explain our vocabulary as "modern dance" rather than take the extra step of explaining the nuances between "modern," "contemporary," or "experimental." Suffice it to say that much of the work that qualifies itself as site-specific (from New York anyway) frequently uses a contemporary dance vocabulary. In the festival here, it seems to run the gamut, including jazz and even a site-specific rendition of "West Side Story."
Third Rail Projects Blog, hosted by Tom Pearson, focuses on the creative and administrative processes employed by affiliated Third Rail and guest artists working in the realms of site-specific dance, dance film, and other performance and visual media.
