Artist for the 2008 Beijing Olympics debuts exhibit in Miami

World Today

Art Basel Miami Beach has opened to the public in Miami, Florida. This year, attention is focused on Shen Wei, a Chinese choreographer and performer, who captured attention in 2008 with his cinematic montage of the Beijing Olympics. CCTV America’s Nitza Soledad Perez reported the story from Miami, Florida.

Shen Wei, artist, painter, and choreographer of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, debuted to a full house. Shen was first a painter and then a choreographer who has performed in more than 30 countries. This is the first major exhibit of his paintings. The art exhibit, called In Black, White and Gray, is a series of 11 pictorial expressions.

“This new series is about who I am, how I see myself between me and the universe,” he said.

That discovery continued with a live performance. Accompanied by a pulsating beat, dancers dressed in black, white, and gray costumes moved around the exhibition.

“Every single dancer has a dimension, a dot dot, much slower than our heart beat, and first of all they could take you to a place in time, and also calms people down and be more focused,” he said.

Artists and dancers at the dress rehearsal wondered how their performance would evolve once an audience was present.

“People would either be very interested and they are with us or I expect some people to go ‘What is this, this is really weird.’ ‘Why are they doing these poses?’ or we can take them to this delicate, intricate place,” said Chelsea Retzloff, a Shen Wei Company dancer.

On opening night, nearly 700 people watched quietly.

“I found the performance really hypnotic, it almost seemed like an organism, like a sponge that was moving, sort of an amorphous machine,” Joan Levin, a dance critic for The Miami Herald, said.

“Clearly, this was not hip hop tonight. This was studied,” art dealer Bernice Steinbaum said. “This was very serious. It speaks to Asian culture.”