The Magnificent Peony Dreams: Yin Mei – Installation Performance + Artist Talk

Join us for a day exploring the works and vision of Yin Mei, Chinese-American choreographer, performer, director, and professor of Dance at Queens College, CUNY in conversation with visiting scholars and professors from China as part of the exchange partnership between Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA, China), the Theatre Department at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

Employing Chinese energy direction and spatial principles as a means for creating dance within the rubric of contemporary dance theater, Yin Mei aims to make visible the inner world that lies beneath the surface of everyday life—a parallel world beyond material purposes and goals, filled with mystery. As part of a generation of artists growing up and performing during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Yin Mei exposes in her works how personal memories, tattooed images of rage, harmony, solemnity and quiet silence exude an ethereal and illusory mood.

Afternoon screenings will feature excerpts of her works: Nixon in China, Seven Sages of Bamboo Grove, Antonioni in China, Empty Traditional/City of Peonies, Cursive, and /Asunder.

The evening will present an installation performance, with pianist Bill Buchman, that merges the artist’s personal memory, contemporary dance, and visual arts, followed by a panel with Yin Mei and others.