When Tao Dance Theater arrived in Venice in 2023 to receive the Silver Lion at the Dance Biennale, awarded by director Wayne McGregor, the troupe appeared as a revelation. They presented works from their ongoing Numerical series, “11,” “13,” and “14” and, two years after, “16” and “17.” The memory of their European debuts at La Biennale remains indelible: Tao have redefined the use of slow motion in bodies that become a single organism, pulsating in unison with the group, revealing individual personalities beyond the same couture dress, black or in different colours. A symbolic representation, it seemed to us, of the Chinese conception of the individual inside society.     

Thanks to an agreement with a major Italian entertainment agency, IMARTS, now Tao regularly tours in Italy, to overwhelming acclaim. This season we caught again “16” and “17” at Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona.

In “16” the choreography is inspired by the Dragon Dance and Snake Dance. The dancers are arranged in a line and appear interconnected; their fluctuations of energy are transmitted back and forth, from one end of the line to the other. Each dancer moves like a dragon, developing a circular movement centred on the head, which can rotate through 360 degrees. New forms of movement emerge from this focus, opening up a wholly new choreographic microcosm. It did not seem entirely foreign: the serpentine line of dancers winding across the stage with a tight yet hypnotic rhythm, seemed reminiscent of Petipa’s Shades in “La Bayadère;” the cambré of the backs similar as well, the first dancer in the line setting the rhythm for everyone.

“17,” in dialogue with the previous “7,” is an exploration linking body movement to the form of sound. Seventeen dancers, initially lying on their backs on the floor, then scattered across the space or gathered together, call and seek each other with vocal calls consisting of notes held for an extremely long time, or excerpts of folk songs whose melancholic cadence we can sense. In the silence of the total absence of music, the physical sound acts as a signal to initiate movements that spread like sound waves, in a natural synchronization. The transmission of the choreography from one dancer to another occurs like a domino effect: another sign of a complex system, united by its elements. According to the choreographers, “the bodies are all connected and theirs is the language of the world.”