It is only gradually that I have discovered that the reason that we had so much free time in the very beautiful Hangzhou. The original local partner of the festival was refused official permission to host the festival. The reason for this late cancellation seems to have been Shu Yang’s performance in Beijing in which he referred to Myanmar/Burma. As a result, there was a scramble to find us another venue in Hangzhou. Most of the western artists knew nothing of this at the time but the Dock 47 space was a great last minute choice: another post-industrial art space in the 798 mould.
The audience that assembled was engaged and curious and asked many questions after Bernadette and I performed. Having moderated my energy to allow for the explosiveness of Bernadette’s energy in Macau, I allowed myself to meet her strength in this space and we had fun with the resulting fusion and friction.
One of the audience members said she enjoyed the performance because she could feel that there was conflict and cooperation. I said I was happy that she saw this because the trust between Bernadette and me in this encounter allows us to experience the conflict and cooperation. She said we were like children in this freedom we had to express ourselves. Perhaps but we are, but if we are children we are children who have lived a lot and so this ‘childlikeness’ is no accident of age but a choice or maybe just an aspiration.
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