SHANG-CHI SUN

Start   › Works   › Vita   › Dates   › Pictures   › Videos   › Downloads   › Contact   › Imprint  


Uphill

2013
Credits   Pictures   Video   Downloads


Uphill

2013

Uphill is a game of hide and seek. The room is bare, only three men stand at its centre.  The music is loud and pulsating, almost tangible. The simplicity of the stage underlines the bodies’ architecture and the invisible lines of tension. The dancers are at the same time an obstacle, a promise, a facade or a shelter. The wordless action reveals the unexpected power of body language and the complexity of the danced emotions. Shang-Chi Sun, David Essing and Ross Martinson owes very unique physical appearances and use them with disarming clarity in their search for the other. The result is a trio of simple beauty at the edge between game, provocation and confidence. Sometimes meditative, sometimes radical, they look for the core of human being between the visible and the hidden. Like the cyclical nature of time, the situations and the relationships are repeated, but never the same. Always there is the desire of the Other - the friend, the brother, the stranger and perhaps even the enemy.
"I see this creation as the final part of a trilogy that began with Je.Sans.Paroles and Traverse. The trilogy refers to three different notions of time. In the first part is the time of mythology. The linear, structured and abstract time in the second part. The third part the cyclical time of nature.†(Shang-Chi Sun)


PRESS REVIEWS

"With mere muscle contractions, the dancer Ross Martinson performs an unlikely dance, his body becomes a bulging and independent organism that expands in different directions. This is (...) already the second stage of an astonishing evening under the direction and choreography of Taiwanese Shang-Chi Sun."
Berliner Zeitung, 7th February 2015, Michaela Schlagenwerth

"Uphill of Shang-Chi Sun made the session worthwhile - The program received a fresh breath with the masculine trio Uphill by the Taiwanese choreographer Shang-Chi Sun who is based in Germany. It is an intricate choreographic game between three beautiful performers, one of them the choreographer himself. The elements of blaring music, dark lights, and movements that contrast from very slow to fast, construct a work that is led by the focus on details in which the human merges with the animal. It made the program worthwhile."
O GLOBO, 13th August 2014, Adriana Pavlova


"In Uphill and in this 60 mins. Shang-Chi Sun has firmly shown the pureness of the body in a dynamic and highly tuned rhythm. He shows his thinking on dance esthetics and his knowledge of body movement. He built a complete language style."

PA-REVIEW (Taiwan), 9th March 2013, Ping-Xiu Cheng


"Shang-Chi Sun penetrated and articulated the connection between Eastern and Western cultural bodies – a connection supported by joints and sound. It is definitely not an act of forced collage. It is not only about stillness and patterns, but about an awakened inner power in the silence, like an energy awaits to project the future from the body presence. This is virtual reality, organismic floating, not only execution.“

ART FORUM (Taiwan), 14th March 2013, Tai-So Cheng


"Uphill, originally a sixty-minute pas de trois, was revised for this performance into a thirty-minute pas de deux, and the result was still delightful. This was a dance of pure body language with no story or dramatic setting: simply bodies moving in the abstract. The dance began with the piercing music of Jörg Ritzenhoff. One dancer lay on the floor and slowly began to move, starting with fingertips, then arms, then shoulders, and finally all four limbs. After quite some time, another dancer joined the performance. Their slow and precise movements formed a contrast with the restless music. The dancers' superb body control made it impossible to perceive the junctures in their movements, such that they created an impression of perpetual motion."

Beijing News, August 2013, Chen Ran


Credits

Choreography Shang-­Chi Sun
Assistant Annapoala Leso
Dance David Essing, Ross Martinson, Shang-Chi Sun / Vincenzo Cappuccio, Martyn Garside
Music Jörg Ritzenhoff
Stage, Light design Hans Fründt
Photos Philipp Dümcke, Ping Hsu
Management Laurent Dubost
Duration 60 min

A production by Company Shang-Chi Sun commissioned by the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center, Taiwan
A co-production by fabrik Potsdam in frame of Programm Artists-in-Residence
With friendly support of Sophiensaelen Berlin
With financial support of Culture administration of Berlin Senate

EARLIER DATES
February 14th 2016 | Uphill | Théâtre du Chêne Noir, Festival Les Hivernales, Avignon (F)
December 10th 2015 | Uphill | Teatro Duse Bologna (IT)
Aug 22, 2015 | Uphill | Theater Petro Ivo, Florianópolis, Brazil
5 -8 February 2015 | Traverse + Uphill (short version) | Dock 11, Berlin (D)
December 11th 2014 | Uphill | Festival December Dance, Brügge (BE)
August 10th & 13th 2014 | Uphill | Festival DANÇA EM TRÂNSITO, Rio de Janeiro (BRA)
July 05th 2014 | Uphill (short version) + Traverse | Würzburg (D)
January 08th 2014 | Uphill (Short version) | fabrik Potsdam (D)
December 05th 2013 | Uphill | Festival tanz.tausch, Cologne (D)
September 14th 2013 | cross reflex | fabrik Potsdam (D)
June 23rd 2013 | Uphill (Duett version) | Beijing Dance Festival (CN)
June 13th to 16th 2013 | Uphill | Sophiensaele Berlin (D)
March 8th to 10th 2013 | Uphill | Chiang Kai-Schek Cultural Center, Taipei (TW)

Pictures

Video

Uphill Trailer Sophiensaele Berlin, June 2013

Downloads

 
DE · EN