Undivided/Divided

Thirty-six square panels filled the floor of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum (YBCA), laid out in a grid with narrow passageways between them. Measuring 7-by-7-feet each, the muslin-covered panels revealed pigmented traces of movement across their once-white surfaces. For the West Coast premiere of Undivided/Divided, the artist-choreographer Shen Wei placed eighteen male and female dancers, all nude from the waist up, atop alternate panels, creating diagonal lines of figures across the room, like a preset checkerboard. The unoccupied neighboring panels displayed bright puddles of paint, foreshadowing their impending disruption. A range of geometric Plexiglas structures, clumps of synthetic hair, and webs of stretched bungee cord occupied the peripheral panels, framing the scene on two sides. Taken together, these discretely staged components built a sense of anticipation for when the isolated dancers, structures, and materials would surely  come together. 

Originally created as a site-specific work for the Park Avenue Armory in New York, Undivided/Divided forced an intimacy between performers and spectators in the comparatively modest space at YBCA. The audience overflowed into the passageways between the panels, close to the dancers’ half-nude bodies as well as to fellow audience members. After the first few minutes, during which each dancer remained within a paneled square, the dancers suddenly broke through their imaginary barriers, crossing to neighboring panels. Their movements began to mirror one another, creating action paintings and later forming duets. Just when their movements had built to a dizzying momentum that suggested improvisation, the dancers danced in unison once again. 

Meanwhile, the various props and mediums had been unsettled by the dancers’ expanding and contracting movements, conflating inert materials with active bodies. However, because the audience was physically woven into the performance, seemingly connecting them in a similar way as the dancers, its presence became as obstructive as immersed. 

Shen Wei Dance Arts. Undivided/Divided, 2013; performance and installation, March 21, 2013, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Courtesy of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Photo: Tommy Lau.

Through the grid of standing bodies, it was nearly impossible to see what was directly behind, let alone what was happening on the other side of the room. Due to this containment and congestion, Undivided/Divided encouraged one’s fixation on the closest action, both alienating and drawing one closer at the same time.

The fact that audience members were mere inches from these actions created a startling sense of simultaneous division and unity in Undivided/Divided. Viewers were on the same level as the dancers, at times standing between them and their counterparts, often making direct eye contact and narrowly avoiding their dripping beads of sweat and paint. As the dancers crossed between audience members and over to other panels, the confrontational proximity created a tension between their vulnerable, stripped down bodies in constant motion and our relatively static, clothed bodies. Ultimately, the push/pull between the boundaries of performance and spectatorship in Undivided/Divided suspended the audience in a state of flux between action and reaction, calling more attention to what supports these distinctions rather than what breaks them down.

Undivided/Divided was performed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco, from March 21 though 24, 2013.

Heidi Rabben is an independent curator and writer living in San Francisco. She is currently completing her MA in curatorial practice at California College of the Arts. Rabben is a finalist for the ACAC Writing Fellowship.