The talents of calligrapher and seal engraver Yang Tao integrated the printed word as part of the visual beauty as four Chinese letter characters as well as the English title were projected onto the screen along with the first of Su Dongpo’s poems. The verse: “Who says an older man can’t return to his youth?” was brought to life as the words disappeared. The painted screen lifted to reveal another screen, black in color. A circular cut-out in the upper space, bounded on each side by a painted golden moon, was inhabited by a bare-chested dancer wrapped from the waist down in white fabric that rooted him to his place. Illuminated as if by moonlight, his torso and arms reached, folded, caressed, and spiraled in a gush of fluidity—painting the space with a sensual calligraphy of the body. Resonant tones of traditional guqin music bathed the visuals in sonic perfection.

The second act was a riveting representation of the poet’s claim of clear perception of worldly existence with its transience and numerous heroes. The title screen lifted, and the stage was filled with medium-sized, clear cubes painted with red Chinese lettering. One, two, and then seven dancers emerged from the lit cubes wearing burgundy colored, full body unitards to perform precise, angular poses sitting atop the blocks. Eventually, their movements impelled them off the blocks and then back on top of them to perform a unison sequence of contemporary abstract movements. Seven more dancers emerged to push their blocks forward into visibility and activated a variety of movements on and off the blocks. With a blackout, the dancers disappeared; then the cubes were lit so that the letters appeared to be white. 

As the cubes were removed, Shen Wei’s painting “Untitled No. 8” came fully into view—its black, white, and gray swirls roiling with energy. The dancers returned wearing sky blue silk tunics over their burgundy unitards. Inscribing circular, spirally movements in space and on the floor, they danced and tumbled in the familiar Shen Wei vocabulary. As more dancers joined like a gathering storm, one figure (Dongpo, danced by Su Peng) remained upstage and apart, slowly revolving around himself. Dongpo eventually joined the group and set off a wave-like pattern of bodily connection among the dancers in a horizontal line downstage.