The presence of the Chinese ballet Tao Dance Theater Ballet at the Nervi Music Ballet Festival 2023 takes on different meanings for the Festival, the Theater and the city itself. Tao Dance Theater Ballet is one of the most renowned emerging ensembles in the contemporary dance scene. In Nervi he will present Circular Movement Contrast, a new choreography for the first time. The company was awarded with the Leone d’Argento prize at the Biennale danza 2023, representing China in the most relevant cultural event in Italy. China Arts and Entertainment has been promoting various complexes of international value for many years, within the structured promotional project Image China, in which Genoa was chosen this year. The presence of Tao Dance Theater Ballet in Genoa pursues an artistic project that also includes the cultural relations between Italy and China, a harbinger of possible future common projects.
TAO Dance Theater Ballet is a company founded in 2008 in Beijing by Tao Ye, Duan Ni and Wang Hao. It is the first contemporary ballet company invited to the Lincoln Center Art Festival of New York, the Edinburgh International Art Festival, the Sydney Opera House, the Théâtre de la Ville of Paris and to the American Dance Festival, where the company had been resident. The company was invited six times in London at Sadlers’ Wells for five commissioned shows. The Numerical Series, conceived by the company starting from a simple creative idea and body aesthetics, have been presented in over 5 continents, 40 countries and 100 festivals. The Numerical Series and the Non-numerical Series have been performed in a wide variety of spaces and contexts: from the ruins of an ancient Roman arena at the Paris Fashion Week to the Singapore Museum of Art & Science, the Arayna Theatre of Qinhuangdao in China, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall and the Beijing Design Week. The company collaborated with the Japanese stylist Yohji Yamamoto’s brand Y-3 on the occasion of the 2015 Paris Fashion Week. In 2019 Tao Dance Theater Ballet and Cloud Gate Dance Theater made Exchange, performed in over 10 Chinese cities. In 2021, the video Infinite Walking remained in the TikTok “hot search list” for many consecutive weeks. Tens of thousands of netizens (web citizens) has imitated the body-free-walking style and the videos has gathered almost 500 million views. In 2014 “Time Out New York” included the works of Tao Dance Theater Ballet among the “Top 10 Dance Shows” of the year, the only Asian company on the list. In 2021 Tao Dance Theater Ballet creates the fashion brand DNTY and inaugurates TAO Studio. The first promotes the design concept for which “clothes should follow the body”, inspired by on a multidisciplinary view drawing on fashion, music, ballet, visual arts and the aesthetic shared by the dancers in terms of both clothes and lifestyle. The second one introduces the course “Circular Movement System”, a program that allows anyone to understand that “the body can still move in such a way” and feel, explore the infinite range of possibilities opening when we consider the body as a kaleidoscope.
