Three Sixty Five: the evolution of a work and its creator

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This was my second opportunity to see Wen Wei Wang’s *Three Sixty Five*, and before the show, I was excited. I loved Three Sixty Five the first time I saw it and was looking forward to seeing its highly emotive physicality again as part of this year’s "Dancing on the Edge Festival":http://www.dancingontheedge.org/. Of course, choreographies evolve, and Three Sixty Five was a different show the second time around; it seemed a bit smoothed down, mellower in some ways, but it remained a showcase for the outstanding talent of Wang and his dancers.

The last time I saw Three Sixty Five, I had a chance to talk with "Wang":http://www.wenweidance.ca/, and in our interview he confided that with this piece he wanted to push all his previous boundaries aside and move past the confines of his cultural traditions and of his previous artistry in order to explore and set free a greater emotional truth.

In spite of the fact that I found this version of Three Sixty Five to be slightly tamer than the incarnation I saw a year and a half ago, it is still a show that soars through its 65 minutes with great emotional candour and tremendously bold physicality. There was no moment during the show that I felt that the mood or pitch was dropped. Every aspect of this work was crafted with tremendous attention to detail, and the result is a spectacular synergy of choreography, dance, music and lighting.

During my interview with Wang, he expressed dissatisfaction with his previous work, _Unbound_, saying that he felt disappointed with himself for not pushing himself harder, for not exploring more emotional territory. Where _Unbound_ was about his past and his culture, and therefore had a greater sense of reserve, Three Sixty Five is a more personal work, which lays bare the vulnerability and the power of human experience. In his sensitivity to both ends of the spectrum, Wang is superlative.

I have to admit that when I originally read that Three Sixty Five was set to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, I wondered if this wasn’t a bit cliché. However, I was happily surprised to discover that the music was more like Vivaldi deconstructed. The strings of the violins can be heard throughout, but rather than being recognizable, and therefore easily understood (and then perhaps ignored), this version of The Four Seasons is distorted and warped, slowed down and then sped up to create an ambience of uncertainty, possibility and play, ultimately providing the perfect backdrop for Wang’s original vision of the cycle of life. Rather than driving the choreography, the music is more like a highly atmospheric canvas that works both as a guide and a counterpoint to the work the dancers are doing on stage.

In discussing the use of Vivaldi’s music as the basis for this piece, Wang explained that he was as fascinated by Vivaldi the man as by the piece itself. In his research, Wang discovered that Vivaldi had been working at a church when he wrote the music, and that he had, in fact, brought many girls to the church, given them violins, and written this piece for them to play. Apparently Vivaldi liked the young girls quite a bit, and this ultimately led to his music being banned from certain churches in Italy. It is this part of the story that captivated Wang; he too thought The Four Seasons could be a bit too pleasantly cliché, but in his exploration of the underside of the music and the man he discovered, that like the polyphony of The Four Seasons, there are many stories, many contradictory narratives to any man’s life.

And so, in homage to all sides of Vivaldi, Three Sixty Five opens with a suspended violin being lowered in front of the dancers who quickly depart from this anchor and set out on very different journeys than the appearance of a violin on stage might suggest.

The six agile dancers, including Wang, first enter the stage wearing loose white pants and shirts, and in this they are neutral, highlighting the precision of their movement. As the piece progresses, the light shifts from neutral to warm to cold, and the dancers come on stage wearing white, then pink or mauve shirts, then no shirts. At times these three possibilities are mingled, suggesting the multiplicity of life’s directions, the many narratives of one journey.

Wang’s choreography incorporates a great deal of unison as well as a number of solo pieces and duets. Sometimes there are solos and duets going on concurrently, but what is constant is Wang’s use, as a choreographer, of the full potential of both the body and the spirit of his dancers. These dancers can evoke tenderness or desperation with the flick or a wrist, or the bend of an elbow. When they dance in duets, the dancers exhibit a touching gentleness with each other; at times they appear to be caressing one another as though to reassure each other, and then again they fly with ease into each other’s arms, throwing their bodies lightly and with confidence into the care of another. Through it all, they evoke joy, passion, sexuality, despair, anguish, tenderness and finally a hard earned tranquility at the very end.

When I spoke to Wang about Three Sixty Five we talked about it being a much darker and more internal journey than _Unbound_, and for this reason Wang said he was worried that audiences would not like it as much. However, where I appreciated _Unbound’s_ aesthetics, the first time I saw Three Sixty Five I was much more drawn in by its intense emotional power along with its subtly beautiful aesthetic qualities.

So, while I missed some of the raw power of the Three Sixty Five I first saw, it’s clear that Wen Wei Wang can choreograph beautifully across such an emotional range and such a spectrum of physical possibility. It’s a good thing that his shows are remounted so that a spectator can watch the evolution of his great talent as he hones it before our eyes.

_Three Sixty Five, produced by Wen Wei Dance as part of this year’s Dancing on the Edge Festival. Choreographer: Wen Wei Wang, Vivaldi's Four Seaons reworked by Giorgio Magnanensi and featuring cellist Peggy Lee. Lighting design by James Proudfoot, and costumes by Kate Burrows. Performances on July 10 and 11 at the Vancouver Playhouse_

By Jill Goldberg