by Naked performers who are covered with paint on the dirt and leaves. Threatening sculptures hang on the ceiling and walls. The costumes have an animal quality. At some point a springs current is scattered across the stage; With another, pink petals float from above. This is a trance, an immersive psychedelic experience that is inspired by a versatile mix of influences from electronic music and rave culture to Buddhism, cartoons and Japanese Butoh dance theater.
When the 39-year-old Chinese artist and director Tanzhuo Chen had the idea for trance in 2019, it should accompany a solo exhibition of his work in the M WOODS Museum in Beijing. The original result was a three -day performance, with each break of 12 continuous hours being exceeded. Since then it has been drawn to a single 12-hour production. This month, the show in London is part of the South Bank Center in London, a series in which the art and culture of East and Southeast Asian culture is celebrated.
For Chen, it will serve an artistic return for Chen, which has done his studies and master’s degree at Central Saint Martins or the Chelsea College of Arts. “London definitely influenced a large part of the club,” he says of video calls, dressed in a simple black T-shirt and a clear frame glasses. “When I lived in the UK, I was quite young and experienced a lot of his club culture.” Since graduating in 2010 (and returning to China a few years later), he has made a name for himself by bringing the saint and subcultural.
In 2015, Chen founded the collective Asian dope boys from the art dance, which brought a cult for shows that resembled both religious ceremonies and avant garde techno parties. In 2018, 20 members in Europe toured in places such as London Barbican, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Hellen, an experimental space in the famous Berlin Club Berghain.
He has lived in Berlin for the past three years. In 2024 in the Hau -Performance area of the city of Premiered Ocean Cage, a video and performance piece that is inspired by Lamalena stories. The fishing village in Indonesia is one of the last communities in the world, in which traditional whale hunt still exists, the locals rank on them both for food and as part of their spiritual beliefs. “Because it is a volcanic island, nothing grows so that they have to go rolling after their survival,” he says, explaining that they believe that their ancestors were born as whales to feed the village.
Chen wanted to bring people from different disciplines together. “Musicians, actors, professionals, non-professionals,” he explains. Six years later, the genre bending theater-rave was carried out worldwide. The latest version can be divided into six two -hour chapters, each of which thinks about Buddhist topics, in particular the idea of reincarnation, which has six areas in its cosmology: gods, demigods, people, animals, hungry spirits and hell. “In the beginning they appear from a picture of hell,” he says of a sequence, which also refers to a series of Japanese paintings of the 15th century, which research the different stages of death. “A beautiful woman dies, her rotting body is eaten by dogs and at the end becomes dust,” he says. The first chapter feels particularly meditative for him. “It comes from the Buddhist idea how to treat your body and that nothing other than meat is left when you die.”
After the last chapter, trance turns into what Chen calls “collective rave” and takes a more optimistic turn. “The last part is the most human; everyone dances alone,” he says. “It is the part that is strongest to the club culture, dancing, the expression of the individual.” It is also the point in the performance when the observations are most involved. “So much of it is to share the moment with the audience” and make them part of “this ritual and this ceremony, a moment of the healing cleaning torque”.
Trance does not follow an explicit narrative and enables you to develop through continents and venues. “It is a bit more local because the stage never looks the same,” he says. He points out that some venues are well equipped, offer some space outdoors and are some simply dilapidated buildings. But as a result he will never be fed up with showing it. “Small changes and different conditions keep this work on because it has to,” he says. In the Southbank Center “we create a special design for this and use your large theater room to shield the ocean cave”.
He has also invited the Japanese Dubstep musician Takeaki Maruyama, who is professionally known as a goth trading. “I went to many Dubstep parties when I was in London before some of the legendary Dubstep clubs were closed. Now I feel like hugging it,” says Chen.
It is not every theater production that can also earn as a 12-hour rave. “I get a lot of feedback,” says Chen. “People say it is the best performance of all time … they feel healed, they feel cleaned, they cried, all these feelings. And then some people really don’t like it! All these strong emotions are what I appreciate. They do not have to understand or have background knowledge – how they are emotionally related to the piece and connect to the piece is the most important thing for me.”
• Tanzhuo Chen: Trance will be on July 18 as part of the Southbank Center in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer, London, which takes place from July 17th to 20th
