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Half the Sky

Mao Zedong’s famous statement that women hold up half the sky may sound poetic and even liberating. But sadly, it was propaganda designed to galvanize women’s labor and buy-in to further the Communist Party’s political agenda during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Chinese choreographer, Yin Mei, with her new evening-length work “Half the Sky,” reclaims a history stored in women’s bodies—stories of tenderness, pain, endurance, and survival—common ground of women’s experience. The deeply intuitive work gives voice and agency to the holders of half the sky.

Performance

Yin Mei Dance: “Half the Sky”

Place

Asia Society, New York, NY, January 10, 2026

Words

Karen Greenspan

Yin Mei's “Half the Sky.” Photograph by Julie Lemberger

Born in China, Yin Mei grew up during the Cultural Revolution, training in Chinese traditional dance and Peking Opera dance before joining the Hong Kong Dance Company. In 1985, Yin Mei came to the United States to study modern dance, hoping to break free of the restrictive traditions she had been schooled in back home. Over the years, Yin Mei’s work has taken an interdisciplinary approach, exploring themes that arise at the intersection of Asian traditional performance and Western contemporary dance. Her movement style uses Chinese energy direction from her practice of Tai Chi, and one can see the dramatic pacing of jo ha kyū ((slow start, break, rapid finish) shaping her choreographic structure.

“Half the Sky” premiered at Asia Society in January. From the beginning, the stage was framed by floor-to-ceiling painted cloth panels that divided the backdrop into three sections. The panels, hand-painted by Yin Mei, resembled tall totem poles or densely decorated vertebral columns in that they were segmented vertical designs. Upstage center, three women, their backs to the audience, initiated a thematic gesture of reaching diagonally outward with one arm. They were accompanied onstage by violist and composer Christian Frederickson, who conjured wistful, melancholic strains on the viola. The dancers slowly revolved to face the audience and continued with a phrase of gestures evoking what could be perceived as singularly female experiences—one hand touching the belly as the other traced a circle ending in the diagonal reach. The threesome moved mostly in unison with a fluid language of gestures: reaches, circular motions, self-caress, hand to mouth, hand to belly, and the like. They communicated yearning, softness, pain, soothing, and resilience as these qualities filled and moved their bodies in space.

Yin Mei's “Half the Sky.” Photograph by Julie Lemberger

Yin Mei's “Half the Sky.” Photograph by Julie Lemberger

The energy changed as they sat on the floor, scooted backward, rolled over, and scampered quickly around in a circle gesturing with busyness. Down on the floor again, they reprised the gesture of hand to belly—this time, repeatedly opening and closing it against themselves as if releasing a succession of progeny into the world. Then, back on their feet and skipping, the dancers broke their unison with explosive leaping turns. The violist amplified the uptick in energy with charged, frenetic bowing until one of the women rolled away from the group for a time out. She sat at the foot of the stage, one leg dangling over the edge, and looked out into the audience making direct eye contact. This non-confrontational breach of the fourth wall was repeated and felt like an invitation to connect.

In an astounding vision, Frederickson played a silky tune on his viola while walking in a deep crouch leading the dancers across the stage. The women unfurled a scroll of paper and painted a flowing line of calligraphy using charcoal pieces. In the ancient art of Chinese calligraphy—using ink, paper and body—energy becomes form. Then inverting this formula, the women connected their bodies and reversed course—dancing back across the paper scroll, transmuting the energy of the calligraphy back into their bodies as movement.

Yin Mei's “Half the Sky.” Photograph by Ellen Wallop

Yin Mei's “Half the Sky.” Photograph by Ellen Wallop

Meanwhile, archival black and white photos of girls’ faces (Yin Mei’s childhood classmates during the Cultural Revolution) were projected onto screens hung between the painted panels. The dancers ran upstage to the portraits with black markers and frantically scribbled markings onto the screens, embellishing the portraits with their own artistry. Then racing back downstage to the paper scroll, they rolled themselves over the charcoal calligraphy to mark their own bodies—a metaphor for how history is inscribed in the body. The portrait projections changed and cycled through many faces. They kept changing with increased rapidity, intensifying a visual rhythm as the dancers escalated their activity of running back and forth between marking up the portraits and imprinting onto themselves the markings from the paper. 

In another rupture, the dancers began to rub off the markings from each other’s bodies. Then, turning their attention to the downstage paper scroll, they tore it to pieces running around with torn strips and shreds and tossing them about in an image of complete destruction. The changing photo portraits on the backdrop sped up even more—as if bearing witness to it all, keeping score. The women, clasping hands, tiptoed along the downstage ledge—quick to rescue each other as feet accidentally slipped off the edge. As they backed away and returned upstage to repeat their signature gesture phrase, the photo portraits disappeared. What was left were the scribbles added onto the photos by the dancers—fully recognizable as expressionist portraits—a mark of their own.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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