AAP Online Review CITY: Beijing GALLERY: Taikang Space EXHIBITION : Dance With It AUTHOR: Tom Mouna Dancing: an alluring concept that has n’t been given much exhibition attention in China Presented by Beijing’s Taikang Space, “ Dance With It , ” curated by Su Wenxiang, was a show of nine artists resolutely focused on the topic — specifically, the significances of Western - style dancing in China from the late - 1970s up to the present day. In the first room, viewers were invited to put on a set of wireless headphones and listen to music from a specially created playlist, emphasi zing the inextricability of the imported tunes , such as Kraftwerk’s 1983 track Tour de France , from the country’s dance culture Like much of the show’s works, t wo small oil paintings of partner dances by Cui Jie seemed to embody th ese songs T he canvas es ’ ambiguities , resulting from their weighty impasto s, which belie the calculated rhythm s of the depicted movement s , allude to the nebulous history that the exhibition traces. As a counterpoint to Cui’s paintings , o n the opposite wall were a series of photographs by the well - known recorder of life in reform and post - reform China, Li Xiaobin The documentary - style images offer a potted history of the official status of chiefly ballroom dance in China A photo showing groups dancing together in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People — with many same - sex couplings , as, evidently, the weariness of male and female contact had persisted even after the Cultural Revolution — attests to a moment in 1978 of changing governmental attitudes to ward a leisure activity that had previously been considered bourgeois , and that was markedly not revolutionary opera. N ot long after , dancing bec a me a bugbear to some apparatchiks : a n adjacent photograph from 1982 features a sign in a park’s restaurant explicitly forbidding dancing Extending th is undulating narrative were several images showing groups cavorting in public , signalling the subsequent restoration of dance’s reputation. It was with in this unpredictable but nonethele ss formative period of Western dancing in China that m agazines, instructional books , movie s and dance - related equipment were both created with in and imported into the country T he exhibition included a well - selected assortment of such paraphernalia alongside archival documents tracing the localized historical and societal resonances of ballroom, breakdance and other forms of Western dance. Placed centrally in th e first gallery were two photographs showing two of the first large - scale advertising billboards to be installed in China in 1979 . O ne features a young woman wearing modern cloth ing — radical for the time — while the other pictures a woman s elling electrical appliances from the Japanese company Sony Positioning these materials as evidence, t he exhibition argued that the freedom to move one’s body, to dance with the opposite sex and to listen to contemporary foreig n music was a part of and a driver for wider epochal shifts. The second space was arranged like a dancefloor , with a glistening, rotating disco ball hanging overhead. A number of small screens arranged around the edges of the room showed dance - related Chinese movies from the 1980s and ’ 90s. Inserted among these were t wo idiosyncratic video works . Hao Jingban’s Of f Takes (2016) is a mordant documentary - style film that use s the artist’s archival footage to illustrate the story of a protagonist who , according to the narrator , danced with Zhou Enlai, was officially investigated for dancing, and wh ose life is defined by dance Dance! Dance! Bruce Ling! (2013 ) sees the artist Yao Qingmei enacting a purposefully scatty ballet while dressed in a Bruce - Lee - style yellow jump suit and holding the Communist scythe and hammer . H er movements are backed by a disjointed piano rendition of the music from the 1976 Bruce - Lee flick Fury of the Dragon The video’s backdrop is a screen of painted bamboo trees and a traditional ding ( ancient Chinese cauldron ) , the latter of which the artist eventually destroys using her two tools The work addresses the constant rocky interrelationship of dance, politics and identity in China, in much the s ame way that “ Dance With It ” has fruitfully begun to do