New Report on Giving Birth
Wen Hui / Living Dance Studio
Wen Hui, the pioneer of contemporary dance in China, created the piece “Report on Giving Birth” in 1999, which was based on interviews with factory workers, doctors, journalists, midwives and her own mother about their experiences of pregnancy and birth. 25 years after the premiere, in “New Report on Giving Birth” we experience four dancers who venture new perspectives on female bodies. They encounter each other as mothers, non-mothers and women with migration histories from China, Thailand, Iran, Italy and Germany. In powerful, playful, poetic and intimate choreographies, they translate the associated realities and attributions. Together with the dancers, Wen Hui explores how structural violence and control become entrenched in bodies.
Duration: ca. 1 h 20 min
Language: English
06.12.: Following the piece there will be an audience discussion
Chinese choreographer and dancer Wen Hui makes documentary films and installations and is one of the pioneers of Chinese contemporary dance theater. For the past thirty years, Wen Hui has been using dance theater as a means of social interventions. Since 2008, she has been researching the body as a form of personal social documentation and experimenting with how bodily memory catalyzes collision between history and reality.
Wen Hui’s work and that of the Living Dance Studio have been invited to perform at the most provocative stages and festivals internationally. Her two films, Dance with Third Grandmother and Dance with Farm Workers, were shown in the Chinese Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Dance Only Exists When It Is Performed is a set of two solo exhibitions featuring Yvonne Rainer and Wen Hui at the Beijing inside-out Art Museum in 2019. And her exhibition, The Arts Of Memory, was shown at the Guangzhou Image Triennial in 2021. Wen Hui’s solo work, I am 60, was presented at Festival d’Automne in Paris and at the 2021 Ruhrtriennale in Germany. Her newest work, New Report on Giving Birth (2023), was also presented at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Dance Festival in Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, HELLERAU European Art Center in Dresden, and at PACT Zollverein in Essen.
Concept & Choreography: Wen Hui / Living Dance Studio
Dance and Performance: Alessandra Corti, Patscharaporn Distakul, Parvin Saljoughi, Wen Hui
Dramaturgy: Alexandra Hennig
Music: Matthias Engelke
Video: Rémi Crépeau
Light Design: Matthias Rieker
Sound: Willi Bopp
Dramaturgical Consultation and Research Consultation: Zhang Zhen
Production: Katja Armknecht
Operatives Production Management: Nadine Branca
Outside Eye and Consultation: Julia Alsdorf
Distribution: Damien Valette
A production by Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm as part of the Rhine-Main Dance Platform, in co-production with HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts, PACT Zollverein, Théâtre de la Ville Paris, Festival d’Automne Paris and HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
Supported as part of the alliance of international production houses, by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK
Co-production funding for dance by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and by f.f.m – Freunde und Förderer des Mousonturm.
