Connect Transfer (2004)
Concept and Choreography: Shen Wei
Music: Kevin Volans, String Quartet No. 6, Iannis Xenakis, Evryali György Ligeti, Sonatina: II—Andante, Monument, In zart fliessender Bewegung
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Sound Design: Shen Wei and Fitz Patton
Set and Costumes: Shen Wei
Running Time: 30 minutes
“Connect Transfer was the first time I used actual paint in my choreography. But when I began work on Connect Transfer, I had no thought of using paint. I was exploring ideas of connection – how the body is connected among its parts and how bodies can connect with one another in unusual ways. I also wanted to see how these connections could flow and was also interested in the motion of painting, rather than the act itself. Paint came late in the process, it was a natural progression for me in this dance and in my choreography. I wasn’t taught the arts separately, so I don’t separate them in my work.”
—Shen Wei
Press/Reviews
“A modern masterpiece. To miss it is to miss an exhilarating work by one of the most expansive, creative minds in the arts...'Connect Transfer' blends contemporary dance with painting and—in a sense—sculpture. The Shen Wei Dance Arts company delivers this potent mix with such soaring artistry that it would be an insult to reduce this company's work to 'multimedia'. This is art in the fullest sense.”
—Pia Catton, The New York Sun
''Connect Transfer' is an ingenious synthesis of dance, music and visual art, each element unpredictably linked to another....Mr. Shen is pushing into new territory, exploring inventive and daring movement but also altering the way movement can be perceived.”
—Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times
"The big news about Connect Transfer concerns Shen Wei's reinvention of the dance vocabulary: the way the movement impetus flowers from any point in his dancers' bodies to any other, bypassing every convention of dance-as-steps or choreography as a predominantly vertical statement...The movement is glorious."
—Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times