TAO Ye
Artistic Director and Choreographer
Born in Chongqing, Tao Ye is a graduate of the Chongqing Dance School in China. After dancing with the Shanghai Army Song & Dance Ensemble, he joined Shanghai Jin Xing Dance Theater, and later moved to Beijing to join the Beijing Modern Dance Company (BMDC). In 2008, at the age of 23, Tao Ye founded TAO Dance Theater. His main works include: Weight x 3, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Inspired by Oriental thought, he developed Circular Movement System in combination with his own style of dance. This system enjoys a high reputation internationally. At the age of 27, he was invited to perform at Lincoln Center Festival in New York City. In 2012, Asia’s Men’s UNO magazine awarded Tao Ye the “2012 Elegance Award” for cultural leadership. He was named Sadler’s Wells 2011-13 “New Wave Associates”. The Beijing News awarded him the 2013 Innovator Award for Dance, and two years later, the 2015 Emerging Artist Award. Tao Ye has been invited to cross-disciplinary collaborations such as film, theatre, fashion design, video, photography and etc.
Tao Ye consistently signifies his choreography with minimalistic style, repetition and restriction. His creative concepts include: focusing on the grooves of the spine while removing the movements of dancers’ limbs, replacing the accompanying soundtrack with live vocals from the dancers seeking to make the dancers become a “mobile sound system”, restricting dancers’ bodies on the dance floor seeking to limit the vision in two dimensions, naming his works simply with numbers, and etc. His concepts were acclaimed“definitely on the cutting edge” and are very challenging for dancers and spectators.