Do You Speak Chinese2015/10/18th :14:00; 19th :14:0018:30
Do You Speak Chinese? Choreographer and dancer Victoria Chiu is an Australian artist based in Melbourne. Her father was a Chinese immigrant to Australia. He migrated in the year 1965. She is proud of her Chinese heritage. Strangely though she doesn’t speak a Chinese language and the closest thing she has to a Chinese cultural ritual is the odd Chinese dinner in Melbourne’s China Town. Nonetheless, people often see her as Chinese.
Growing up in Australia with Chinese ancestry she has felt the challenge of not being able to adequately articulate the complexities of her heritage.
The historical disconnections to her cultural identity has led her on a creative, artistic journey to discover her Chinese roots, a journey through contemporary dance that has and will continue to uncover a wealth of knowledge for the rest of her life.
Artfully exploring the connection between physicality, language and race, Chiu boldly recreates identity through language and exquisitely through contemporary movement.
This beautifully choreographed performance plays with the many ways our bodies speak for us and combines the body’s translation of foreign semiotics, sights and sounds to create a poetic, moving, dreamscape of what it’s li
ke for the body and mind to be on a journey and discovery of dual identities.
