Shen Wei, 30 Years of Art

To many, the name Shen Wei might conjure the distinctive choreography of the Opening Ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Born in 1968 in Hunan, China, and currently living and working in Paris and New York, Shen Wei is an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer. But many may not be as familiar with his vast output in other mediums—particularly painting and film.

Performance of “Connect Transfer” at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014. Image courtesy of Shen Wei

To set the record straight, this October, the visionary dancer, choreographer, and visual artist Shen Wei will celebrate thirty years of making art with a retrospective exhibition titled “Shen Wei: Still/Moving.” The exhibition, which begins in October 19 and runs through April 2026, is a joint presentation between the Katonah Museum of Art (KMA) and the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a public exhibition, arts residency, and performance space housed on the historic Rockefeller Estate. Both institutions are located in Westchester County about an hour’s drive from New York City. The collaborative exhibition will illuminate the full scope of the artist’s practice—offering rare access to Shen Wei's paintings, films, a new choreographic work, and video highlights of the Shen Wei Dance Arts repertoire.

Fjord Review spoke with Shen Wei about this retrospective exhibition, his artmaking process, and the vision that inspires and motivates him to create. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

When and how was the idea for this thirty-year retrospective born?

Shen Wei: We started talking about it five years ago. This is the 25th anniversary of the company, but for me, it is thirty years since I moved to New York. I am celebrating thirty years as an artist—making paintings, films, and dance. At this point, the dance company has been touring internationally for twenty-five years and is well known. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has been supporting my dance work and five years ago they said, “We would like you to do something when we open the Pocantico Center.” I thought it would be good have a show of my artwork aside from the dance company—something the public doesn’t know much about. My paintings and other creations inspire my dance work, and my dance work inspires my paintings. They are all related—my dances have visual elements, and my paintings have lots of movement. So this will give people the chance to see my paintings, my films, and, of course, my dances.

I love the title “Still/Moving.” How did you come up with it?

The origin of the title was a production I did at the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in 2011 that was also called “Still/Moving.” I never used the title for any of my paintings even though I have expressed that concept in my visual art. Everything that is alive is moving. Even something that appears to be still has energy moving through it. In some of my early dances, I played with moving very slowly—to the point that people thought we were not moving at all. But actually, we were moving a lot. Our bodies are in movement all the time; nothing is really still. On another level, you may see something as still, but you may feel the energy it sends through your thoughts and feelings. I also like this title because it reflects a lot about my painting process. The paintings are non-moving objects, but the act of painting involves a lot of movement—strokes with speed, texture, direction, and quality. And you feel that movement when you see these still works.

Shen Wei painting Mindscape #3 in his Paris studio. Image courtesy of Shen Wei

You appear to seamlessly flow from one art form to another. How have you come to express yourself through so many different mediums?

When we talk about the arts, let’s remember that I grew up in an artistic family and I trained in the Chinese Opera. We trained in singing, dance, acrobatics, kung fu, and acting. So at an early age, I got used to doing a lot of different things as a performer. At the same time, as part of our family’s tradition, I learned painting and calligraphy. I painted even before I started to dance. All these forms allow me to receive and express human feelings and the joy of life. My exploration in one medium often pushes me to the next place in another one. And I continue to learn more art forms. Each one charges your humanity differently.

I have made hundreds of paintings, but I never exhibited them until recently and that was because people asked me to do it. I make art because it’s something I want to do. It’s not a product that I make for someone else. I have also been making videos that I never showed to anybody. . . until 2018. These were not meant to be shown to anybody. They are more like a personal journal of my thoughts and feelings.

How do the impulse to paint and the impulse to choreograph relate to each other? Does working in one mode translate into creativity in another mode?

I was working on a series about how dance movement transcends the visual experience. There are all these elements inside a movement that you can’t necessarily see—energy, timing, texture. This is knowledge that exists inside the dancer’s body. It’s not about what it looks like. It’s about what is behind what it looks like. There is movement inside the visual form. Then I started working on these same ideas in my paintings. So I made a series of paintings called “Slide-Turn,” two of which we will show at the KMA. It’s like the dance movement where you are sliding and then you do a turn. I created many variations on this simple movement sequence varying the speed of each element as well as the number of turns. Then I dipped my feet in paint and performed the movement variations to paint the canvases. The different movement variations with their distinct speeds and the tension and weight each required—all this translated visibly onto the canvas.

What was the thinking behind programming the exhibition across two locations?

Both institutions have wanted to show my work for a while, and I have a lot of work. It cannot all fit into one place. These paintings are like my babies. Some can take me five or six years to complete—to figure out what they need to be. I had an exhibition of my earliest paintings; they go back to 1986. I have been making art for almost forty years, but privately. People have seen my dance work because the company tours a lot. Only in recent years have I begun to share my paintings publicly.

Shen Wei's “Movement #3.” Image courtesy of Shen Wei

What are the main themes from your body of work that will be featured in the exhibition?

There are two themes. At the KMA, we focus on the work since 2000. This marks when I started discovering movement in visual art (paintings). We see a lot of movement in the brushstrokes—related to dance movement and to music. You will experience how the sound of music affects your feelings and inspires movement in your body that moves through your brush to create a painting. You will actually see a painting that incorporates the quality, energy, and texture of a piece of music exhibited together with the sound. In fact, you will see a whole series of paintings while you hear the associated music. We will show paintings inspired by dance movement and they will be exhibited along with a video of the related dance excerpt. And you will see a video of the painting process I used—from beginning to end. And then you will see the finished painting… with the music. So we will show some of the techniques I have been using for over twenty years to create work. Seeing the movement in still paintings is the theme at the KMA.

The exhibition at Pocantico focuses on my most recent work—from the pandemic onward. These paintings go beyond music and movement to address the spirit. They are a kind of landscape—but of your soul or spirit—a visual, spiritual landscape. And I am working on a new dance work in conjunction with this, which will be called “Mindscape.”

How was it decided which aspect of your work would be hosted by each institution?

Both institutions have been in conversation for a while. But the director of the KMA, Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, conceptualized the plan. Both sites are museums, and the exhibitions will be comprised mostly of paintings, but they will each house something totally different, giving people a completely different experience. At Katonah, you will see works displayed with my videos and music. At Pocantico, you will see paintings, films of my dance works, and showings of the new choreography in process.

How much live dance will be incorporated into the exhibitions?

At Pocantico, we will have a two-week residency to continue working on the new piece “Mindscape” that we began this past summer at the American Dance Festival (ADF) and will premiere there next summer. The residency will conclude with a special show geared toward our dance audience on October 17th, in which we will perform excerpts from that work. They will also show some of my dance films. And we will continue to schedule more for later. At Katonah, we will re-stage “Connect Transfer” in the outdoor sculpture garden for their opening on October 19th. Then we will offer some educational programs with performances and conversations for the local community.

What is your relationship with ADF and how was that relationship instrumental in launching your company?

I began my modern dance training at the American Dance Festival’s program at the Guangdong Dance Academy in China in 1989. Then in 1991, I co-founded the first modern dance company in China—Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Later, when I moved to New York in 1995 after receiving a fellowship to study at the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab, I approached ADF sending them my videos and told them I was in the US and would like to participate in their programs. They invited me that summer for their International Choreographers Residency program. I made a piece there that was just okay—kind of derivative. I returned to New York and invested myself over the next five years in creating choreography, paintings, and films. During that time I made many works that never went anywhere. But I was moving through a process of understanding and developing my own artistic approach to movement and visual arts.

In 1999, I went back to China and made a piece called “Folding” for the Guangdong Dance Company. I thought to myself, “I know and love all the American modern dance techniques, but I am going to create something with my own movement, artistic vision, and approach.” When I made “Folding,” the reaction I received was that they had never seen modern dance like this. The piece was a huge success—in Europe first. So I sent the videotape to ADF. They said, “This is something totally different!” So they immediately invited me back in 2000 and I made another work called “Near the Terrace” using the same approach. Again, it was a huge success. Once I had successes in both Europe and the US, invitations to perform started pouring in. But I didn’t have a company; I only had the dances. So, I chose a number of dancers from ADF who had performed my work and a few from SUNY Purchase—twelve dancers—to form the first generation of my dance company and start touring my work.

Performance of “Connect Transfer” at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014. Image courtesy of Shen Wei

Will your movement technique (Natural Body Development) be addressed in any way in the exhibitions?

No, not really. That is more for professional level dancers—not the exhibition’s educational program. The technique is taught by my dancers at ADF, many universities, and dance centers.

How much of your movement technique is influenced by Eastern concepts and how much is influenced by Western ideas?

I have thought about this for a long time. During my education, I learned all the different modern dance techniques including ballet. I also trained for ten years in Chinese Opera. These comprehensive ways of using the body are totally different. For me, all of them are beautiful and have amazing value. Must we wash away all the knowledge we have accumulated in the past to make something new, or can we push the envelope to find new expressions with knowledge from the past? I’m the kind of person who loves classical tradition, yet I also embrace new and modern art. So my technique combines knowledge from Chinese classical traditions as well as from Western modern dance techniques. This combination has allowed me to dance so many different qualities of movement. I wanted to capture a way of training that wouldn’t just be useful for my choreography, but something that everyone could use. For example, I developed some unique movement qualities during my early training in Chinese Opera and Kung fu. I took that energy and quality of movement and integrated it into my dance technique so that anyone could access it. And I still love all the modern dance masters’ classics. The movements are beautiful. But I wanted my technique to benefit any dancer and give them the ability to perform any choreographer’s work in the global arena—not just Western dance. My technique includes Eastern, Western, traditional, and contemporary concepts as well as my unique understanding of movement from years of choreography. It involves internal aspects related to breath (qi), muscles, joints, the body's capabilities, and mental space. This is aligned with external forces such as gravity, momentum, and other energies. It includes a massive amount of information—some of it yet uncategorized. Even my dancers, who have been with me for years, can only teach limited aspects of the whole technique. Ultimately, the technique is for the dancers … so they can dance.

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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