Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories

The freedom to say what needs to be said on stage is cannot be taken for granted everywhere. In China, for example, it is still forbidden to talk in public about national traumas such as the great famine in the 1960s and the terror of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. And the same applies to topics such as sex and pregnancy. The headstrong choreographer Wen Hui is attempting to break through these taboos. With a colourful, lively combination of dance, text, existing and new film material, she tells her audiences – in and outside of China – about important social phenomena, historical and contemporary.

Listening to Third Grandmother's Stories is about the meeting Hui had with her 83-year-old great aunt Su Mei Lin. This ‘third grandmother’ experienced the social upheavals of the past century first hand. Her well-heeled background turned out to be a great burden under the Communist regime, which forced her to comply with its strict collectivist norms. Wen Hui moved in the opposite direction as the authorities slowly relaxed their grip on the reigns of Communist power. Together, the two women reconstruct the turbulent recent history of women in China.

Wen Hui studied dance at the Beijing Dance Academy before continuing her training abroad, including with Pina Bausch. In 1994, she founded Living Dance Studio, China’s first independent dance group, with filmmaker Wu Wnguan. In her own country, her work has been more or less completely ignored, but in Europe she has presented works including Report on Body (2004) and Report on Giving Birth (2004) and the eight-hour Memory Project (2009).

6 november in the Oosterpoort, Groningen

8 november the Parkstad Limburg Theaters, Heerlen

11 november in the Wilmink theater, Enschede

16 november in the NWE Vorst, Tilburg

20 november in the Stadsschouwburg, Rotterdam

22 november in the Stadsschouwburg, Utrecht

30 november in theater Frascati, Amsterdam