I am saddened by reading Sarah Kaufman’s review of the performance “Other
Suns” (Suns’ revolves around hopes for a changing China, Oct. 31 2009) and
wonder how could the reviewer read so much politics in one pure dance
work.

I saw that the dancers from Guangdong, China, explored a new sense of
freedom with their bodies on stage; they glided, slided, whirled, twisted
and examined every dimension in space. The reviewer might not like the
‘quiet detailed-oriented’ treatment offered by the Chinese dancers, but the
association of the dancers with the ‘culture of collectivism’ was way too
farfetched.

The reviewer seems to be still living in the age of the cold war when
Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov left Soviet Union. The reviewer
mistakenly thinks that all performing arts companies from China nowadays
are state supported and controlled. Not quite so! The Guangdong Modern
Dance Company, although inaugurated by the Guangdong government in 1992,
turned into a privately run company in 2006. It receives partial grants
from the government but has to work hard to meet the budget through social
engagements and work projects like the one collaboration with the Margaret
Jenkins Dance Company.

The reviewer was out to see ‘blood, metaphorically speaking’ on stage, and
am interested in seeing the reviewer’s reviews on some of the contemporary
American choreographers works, like those of Balanchine’s and Cunningham’s.
If the lack of emotion demonstrated by the Chinese dancers was a result of
the ‘culture of collectivism’, then the purity of the Balanchine and the
classicism of the Cunningham, since ‘not a drop (of blood) was spilled’,
must suggest that Balanchine and Cunningham are indeed communist as well.

Willy Tsao
Director, Guangdong Modern Dance Company
[A shorter version was published in the November 14, 2009 Washington Post Letters to the Editor]

*And a wonderful interview with Dan Hurlin here:
http://www.diamondbackonline.com/diversions/to-revive-a-mockingbird-1.858995

You should come volunteer next year!