20 Minutes for the 20th Century, but Asian

This performance subverts the title of Tino Sehgal’s famous 2000 solo piece, whose principle it nevertheless respects: the drawing up of a synthetic panorama of the iconic dance steps of the past century. However, River Lin does not simply offer an adaptation to his own continent’s choreographic culture. By organising this shift between two cultures, he above all highlights the way in which the West has greatly influenced the elaboration of a modern vocabulary in Asia, and provides the possibility for a postcolonial rereading. Produced in collaboration with the Taiwanese dancer Wen-Chung Lin, who has trained in both Chinese folk-dance and classical ballet, as well as the methods of Martha  Graham and Bill T. Jones, the piece turns this multicultural body into the touchstone of a play of influences, or of domination. Performing  these archives means taking a critical view of the hegemony of the western model and initiating a reflection
on the means to make an historical stake
in a globalised world.