About the Company

One of the premier international dance companies, Shen Wei Dance Arts has won worldwide acclaim for "amassing a body of works so strikingly original they defy categorization" (The Boston Globe). The work Shen Wei makes for his Company draws on influences as varied as traditional Chinese culture and arts, European Surrealism, American high modernism, and the ritual power of ancient drama. Transcending East and West, Shen Wei Dance Arts fuses these disparate forms to forge a startling new hybrid form of dance. The Company’s dances reflect the compositional rigor of Shen Wei the visual artist, dancer, and choreographer—incorporating vivid colors, striking design, and imaginative use of space into theatrical, kinetic paintings.

Since its founding in 2000, Shen Wei Dance Arts has performed in 138 cities, in 33countries, on five continents and has appeared at prestigious festivals and venues worldwide, including the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Spoleto Festival, annual performances at the American Dance Festival, the Los Angeles Music Center, Venice Biennale, Sadler’s Wells, the Barbican Centre, Het Muziektheater, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Berliner Festpiele and the Sydney Festival. In the United States, Shen Wei Dance Arts has performed in 25 of the 50 states, gave the first dance performances on the concert stage at Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall in Los Angeles and recently completed a unique 5-year performance residency at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  The Company performs annually in New York City, where it has been presented by the Lincoln Center Festival (5 times), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Park Avenue Armory, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Asia Society, and Fall for Dance at City Center.

Recent company highlights include performances at the Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá in Colombia; Festival de Danse in Cannes, France; performances at Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, Russia; MDC’s Museum of Art+Design, in conjunction with Art Basel/Miami Beach; a four-city tour of Italy, including Milan; performances at Lincoln Center, as part of the inaugural season of Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance; and the premiere of Untitled No. 12-2 at the 2015 Spoleto Festival USA. More recently, the company performed at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, premiered a site specific work at Asia Society Hong Kong Center during Art Basel-Hong Kong, and toured to Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg. Last fall, the Company premiered Neither at BAM’s Next Wave Festival and toured China with performances in Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhuhai. Upcoming engagements include performances in Boston and Chicago.