Third Edition of Women In Motion at West Bund, a Landmark Contemporary Dance Festival in Shanghai
Women In Motion at West Bund returned for its third edition from September 20-22, offering a fantastic program of performances, films, improvisation sessions, workshops, and talks, held at the West Bund Museum in Shanghai. The featured artists for this edition, French and Chinese choreographers Julie Nioche, Hou Ying, and Gu Jiani, presented their new work and collaborations to a large and captivated audience. MB Projects is proud to have accompanied Kering in creating the concept and format of Women in Motion at West Bund and in developing each new edition over the past years.
Women in Motion at West Bund is a program specifically conceived for China under Kering’s global Women in Motion platform, which aims to support and celebrate women in the arts. Developed in partnership with the West Bund Museum in Shanghai, this China initiative focuses on choreography – a discipline where many women are active, but still in need of greater support and visibility. Since its inception in 2021, across three editions, Women in Motion at West Bund has featured and supported nine choreographers (six Chinese and three French), providing them with opportunities to create new works, participate in French-Chinese collaborations, and engage with the public through performances and discussions. The artists have also offered workshops and masterclasses to the audience. Over the years, Women in Motion at West Bund has become a landmark event where audiences gather to experience the captivating power of danse and draw inspiration from the creativity of choreographers.
After “Transmission” (1st edition, 2021) and “Reunion” (2nd edition, 2023), “Body Matters” was the theme of this year’s 3rd edition of Women in Motion at West Bund, curated by Dew Ge, veteran curator and producer in performing arts. By choosing the theme, she emphasized the materiality of the body through the ancient language of dance and explored the relationships between body, gender, society and space.
Mid-career choreographers Julie Nioche (France) and Hou Ying (China) were invited to collaborate and met in Nantes, France. Together, they created the dance duet Differences, which stages their encounter through improvised movements inspired by questions they ask each other. The dance is rooted in the contrasts they observe between their practices, body textures, movements, and cultural memories. It explores the possibility of understanding one another, and even oneself. Julie Nioche also presented her interactive performance L’Impassé.e, co-created with young Chinese dancers: each dancer, one after the other, improvises a dance based on a word suggested by someone in the audience, accompanied by randomly chosen music. The actively engaged audience was charmed and at times mesmerized by the dancers’ inventiveness and expressiveness, and deeply moved by their “gifts”. Gu Jiani, a leading choreographer of the new Chinese generation, showcased a special presentation of her latest and very strong piece Morphing, featuring 6 dancers, which expresses her own reflections on time and speed in this era through the contrast of slowed body movements and intensely jarring music.
The weekend program was completed with workshops and talks, including a discussion featuring the three choreographers and cultural scholar Dai Jinhua, professor at Peking University, on “The Meaning of Boundaries: Reshaping the Body”, exploring dance’s unique ability to emphasize the materiality and constructability of the body. Another of the weekend’s highlights was undoubtedly the Women in Motion at West Bund Dance Party on Saturday night. Huge crowds gathered in the atrium of the West Bund Museum to join in a giant improvisational dance session led by Hou Ying and Julie Nioche.
Although the third edition of Women in Motion at West Bund has come to an end, its legacy will continue through the documentary “Body Matters”, directed and produced by Sun Hui. The film follows the journey of the artists from Kathmandu in Nepal and Nantes in France to Beijing and Shanghai, capturing the choreographers’ exploration of body and mind.
Based in Shanghai, MB Projects has been supporting Kering since 2019 in the strategy, concept development, project building, and implementation of various Women in Motion initiatives in China. These include the three editions of Women in Motion at West Bund (2021, 2023, 2024), as well as the Women in Motion Mentorship Program, launched in Shanghai in 2023.
MB Projects is a leading agency in cultural strategy and management in China. It was founded by Marion Bertagna, a trilingual China specialist, with 25 years of experience in China and in the culture field. MB Projects assists international and Chinese cultural institutions, creative industry companies, and brands wishing to explore opportunities, develop activities, implement cultural projects, build partnerships, or extend their visibility in China.
