Wen Hui Choreographer / dancer

Born in Yunnan, China. She started her professional dance training in Yunnan Art School when she was 13 years old, and her dance study in the school was four years. After having worked as a dancer and dance teacher for years, she studied choreography in the Beijing Dance Academy in 1985, graduating in 1989. She then worked in the Orient Dance & Song Company in Beijing as choreographer. In 1994 she founded the Living Dance Studio with Wu Wenguang in Beijing, engaging in all the performances as a choreographer since. In 2005, she founded the independent art space CCD Workstation in Beijing with Wu Wenguang.

Wu Wenguang Video artist / dramaturge

Wu was born in China's Yunnan province in 1956. After graduating from high school in 1974, Wu was sent to the countryside, where he worked as farmer for four years. Between 1978 and 1982, he studied Chinese Literature at the Yunnan University. Wu moved to Beijing in 1988, and became an independent documentary filmmaker and freelance writer. He founded the Living Dance Studio with Wen Hui in 1994 and worked on all the performances as a performer, video maker and producer. In 2005, he founded the independent art space CCD Workstation in Beijing with Wen Hui.

The Living Dance Studio

The Beijing based dance theatre company the Living Dance Studio (LDS) was founded in 1994 by choreographer Wen Hui and documentary maker Wu Wenguang. Before starting this company together, both artists were already well-known and respected for their achievements in their respective work fields. Living Dance Studio (LDS) is unique in China in various ways: - In the fact that they are an independent company, which means they get no funding from and are not facilitated in any other way by the Chinese government
- In their way of working. Their productions bring together dance, video, stories, sets, lighting and music to document routine and personal acts of life in modern China. As the LDS aims at stimulating the production of contemporary dance in China, they invite different dancers, actors, writers, musicians, visual artists and filmmakers to collaborate with them on each production. The artistic process of creating a piece is just as important as the result. - In the themes they address in their work. The LDS makes very personal work that captures life in China with a documentary's eye. Wen Hui: "We want to focus on the true daily life and show what we are feeling and what is going on now. That is why we named the company 'Living Dance'. We have to give people questions, not answers".