Shang-Chi Sun:
Uphill

Uphill is a game of hide and seek. The room is bare, only three men stand at its centre. The music is loud and pulsating, almost tangible. The simplicity of the stage underlines the bodies’ architecture and the invisible lines of tension. The dancers are at the same time an obstacle, a promise, a facade or a shelter. The wordless action reveals the unexpected power of body language and the complexity of the danced emotions. Shang-Chi Sun, David Essing and Ross Martinson owes very unique physical appearances and use them with disarming clarity in their search for the other.

The result is a trio of simple beauty at the edge between game, provocation and confidence. Sometimes meditative, sometimes radical, they look for the core of human being between the visible and the hidden. Like the cyclical nature of time, the situations and the relationships are repeated, but never the same. Always there is the desire of the Other - the friend, the brother, the stranger and perhaps even the enemy.

I see this creation as the final part of a trilogy that began with Je.Sans.Paroles and Traverse. The trilogy refers to three different notions of time. In the first part is the time of mythology. The linear, structured and abstract time in the second part. The third part the cyclical time of nature.

(Shang-Chi Sun)

CHOREOGRAPHY Shang-Chi Sun ASSISTANCE DRAMATURGY Annapaola Leso DANCEDavid Essing, Ross Martinson, Shang-Chi Sun MUSIC Jörg Ritzenhoff STAGE + LIGHT DESIGNHans Fründt MANAGEMENT Laurent Dubost

A production by Company Shang-Chi Sun commissioned by the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center, Taiwan. A co-production by fabrik Potsdam in frame of Programm Artists-in-Residence. With friendly support of SOPHIENSÆLE. With financial support of Culture administration of Berlin Senate.

photo © Ping Hsu