In their Spring Equinox programme, the LDTX dancers present an array of creative and innovative new choreographies. A huge crowd squeezes into the LDTX studio in Southeast Beijing, to watch eight of the fourteen works created by the LDTX dancers. The company founder, Willy Tsao, welcomes everyone warmly (in both English and Chinese), proudly overlooking his dancers’ brave new works.
The overwhelming feeling I got while watching these pieces was sparked by the litheness of the dancing bodies before me, and the emotional maturity of every dancer who took to the stage. Tsao’s dancers are phenomenal and interesting movers. While this means there is never a boring moment, there were of course some stand-out pieces of the evening.
The show opened with Gong Xing-xing’s A Space, in which three dancers in stripy pyjamas play around a trampoline. At first, the two men (Adiya and Bai Hua) seem completely oblivious to one another despite dancing in unison, playing on the bar of the upside-down frame. They seem preoccupied by something off to their left, and keep throwing nervous glances over their shoulders. A poetic moment reveals a third dancer (Gong) beneath the trampoline, her lithe legs picked out by an intense orange beam of sunny light. The three frolic playfully around, under, and upon the trampoline - peering over the edge, hands pushing on one another’s heads, competing for a better view - until Gong departs, leaving her pyjamas crumpled on the floor. These Adiya and Bai squirrel away eagerly and hang from the edge of the trampoline, as if creating a den. A final, sad trio ensues with the men below echoing Gong’s movements atop the trampoline, a circle of hazy light filtering through its surface from above as they share their pain.
Themes of pain and sadness resurfaced in Li Ke-Hua’s Waiting. Three women (Li, Tang Ting-ting and Fan Lu) are anchored to a single desk. Li’s walks her hands back and forth along the tabletop in her impatience. Sparks fly as Tang spars sexily across the table with Ma Yue, but ultimately he leaves her alone. The three sit together, as if communing their sorrows yet absent-mindedly unaware of one another. They pile up their heads in the centre of the table. Li puts her hands to her face yet they become other women’s hands. She seems haunted by ideas and ghosts of the other women in his life. Hands interlinked over their heads and foreheads to the desk, they convey a deep loneliness in the company of these other women.