WEEKEND COLUMNISTS The arts of China are gradually being absorbed into London’s bloodstream this winter, thanks to the “China Now” and “China in London” festivals, which aim to act as a marker for the next world superpower’s cultural prowess. If you are anything like me, you will want to see things that are strange, new and wonderful. One of the least attractive things about the west’s cultural hegemony is that it sometimes feels as if it has entered its decadent phase, with increasing amounts of hyperbole and money chasing increasingly threadbare products. There is a near-desperate thirst for something fresh that will force us to consider the world, and our place in it, anew.
There are rich pickings in London’s current Chinese programme. To spend a couple of hours with the Beijing Modern Dance Company at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio last week – their first appearance in the city, remarkably – was to encounter two pieces of work that defied easy categorisation, and took their mostly western audience to satisfyingly alien territory.
The first work, Oath – Midnight Rain, unveiled at the Venice Biennale in 2006, combined modern and traditional modes of expression with bold, abstract sweeps that were haunting and beautiful. More than one member of the audience was moved to take pictures of the gorgeous tableaux placed in front of them with their mobile phones: strictly prohibited, but almost forgivable in the circumstances (modern engagement with transcendent beauty consists not in helpless swooning but in furious snapping; Stendhal Syndrome is replaced in the 21st century by Nokia Nervosa).
The second piece was no less enrapturing. Unfettered Journey was a voyage “with no deliberate goal or end”, but plenty of diversion: a fast and dynamic drum-and-bass opening, the dancers’ movements sharp as flick-knives, giving way to gentle waves of bodies rippling across the stage with sensuous stealth and extraordinary grace. There were hints here of martial arts and t’ai chi, but nothing explicitly warlike; all power was latent, disciplined in structure, tentatively harnessed.
The company was warmly but modestly received by its small audience, which perhaps struggled to interpret what it had just seen. That is the flip side of presenting novelty: a sense of bewilderment can inhibit audience response, and respectful mutedness becomes the keynote of the evening. It is familiarity that breeds rowdy appreciation: I thought I could hear, from my seat at the Linbury, the demands for a fourth encore at We Will Rock You.
No matter. The feeling of having seen something special was in the air. The BMDC is a remarkable company. It was founded in the mid-1990s, under the auspices of the Chinese capital’s municipal bureau of culture, but just three years into its life decided to cut its reliance on government subsidy completely, and become independent.
“An artist should be like a wild animal,” said the company’s director Zhang Changcheng on the phone from Beijing earlier this week, when I asked him to explain this bold and counter-intuitive strategy. “It is important to be able to create anything you want. To be hungry. And then you can begin to understand what it is to be human, and why you are an artist.”
This is refreshing stuff; not at all the kind of thing you get from a company in the UK that has just had its Arts Council grant cut or taken away. But this is a side of Chinese culture that is palpable: the wish to move away from stereotypes of monolithic government, and of art forms hidebound by tradition.
Zhang was explicit on this last point. “China has a very long and proud history,” he said, “but I don’t really want to talk about my father and my grandfather. We want to ask the questions – ‘Who am I? Who are you?’ We need to face the future, not always be looking back.” I asked him if it was an exciting time to be an artist in China, and he eschewed the banal response. “Development in China has been mostly economic and it has been very fast. But artistic and cultural development take longer. They should take their time.” To open people’s minds, he said, was a long-term project. He was also not sure that the kind of transformation China was undergoing was unequivocally positive.
It will be fascinating to observe how the economic and cultural freedoms that are being established in China will interact with a regime that still wields a heavy hand in the political arena. It took a cultural superstar, Steven Spielberg, to remind us of that when he announced his withdrawal from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in protest against Chinese policy in Sudan.
In the west, we associate artistic with political freedom. The viler the dictator, the less time he has for any type of freedom of expression, whether it be a direct denunciation of his rule, or a radical flick of an innocuous arm on the dance stage. The artistic tastes of Hitler and Stalin, vilest of all, were famously crude. The avant-garde hurt them. It meant yielding control, and that could never be countenanced.
The spirit of innovation in Chinese contemporary culture, as we are seeing in London, reveals an apparent degree of latitude on behalf of the authorities that is at first sight surprising. But they are not stupid: they know that a vibrant, challenging culture makes for a potent ambassador. Spielberg or no Spielberg, the Olympic opening ceremony will be spectacular and brilliantly performed. I asked Zhang if his company were to be involved. He laughed and said it was a secret. Don’t bet against it, and expect great things.
