Re-Triptych, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Playhouse, Edinburgh

Re-Triptych, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Playhouse, Edinburgh | reviews, news & interviews

Re-Triptych, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Playhouse, Edinburgh

An amazing life doesn't make such gripping dance-theatre - nudity apart

by Ismene BrownThursday, 01 September 2011

'Re-(Part II)': 'You see a suddenly released abandonment quiver in sync through them all'© Roberto Ricci/SWDA/EIF

Shen Wei is only 43, but he’s packed an epic amount into his career. A child sent from home aged nine to study opera; an emigrant to New York; a return to China to choreograph the Beijing Olympics. His urge to put this extraordinary tale into dance theatre is understandable. That Re-Triptych, a semi-biographical creation that’s one of the Edinburgh International Festival’s features in its Asian dance programme this year, is only intermittently intriguing to watch, and largely inchoate in choreography, seems also understandable. Some experiences are just too much to render in art.

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