Chinese artist and designer Xu Rui brings a music and dance performance called "Sky In Their Eyes: The Antelope in a Vanishing Landscape" for the Friday Late event at the Victoria & Albert Museum on Nov. 24, 2017. (Photo/China.org.cn)
The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A Museum) has commissioned Chinese artist and designer Xu Rui to create a music and dance performance for the Friday Late event, called "Sky In Their Eyes: The Antelope in a Vanishing Landscape."
This work was performed live for the very first time on Nov. 24, 2017, as part of "Sino Flux: A celebration of the contemporary art, design, sounds and states of China" at the Raphael Room of V&A.
The performance explored the proud and gentle antelope family, whose wild habitat is fast disappearing through urbanization and slaughter by man. Xu Rui reinterprets the antelope family, endowing them with the traditional Chinese aesthetic character of Junzi, which has a similar meaning to a gentle man. Their habitat was once vast, yet with the expansion of cities it is quickly disappearing. As well as the deterioration of their environment and lack of food, they also face slaughter from man.
Xu Rui's unique costumes, animal masks and specially composed music and dance, told the story of hope and sadness through the eyes of these magnificent antelopes who have stood proudly as wardens of the land and existed harmoniously with nature for thousands of years.
The 11 dancers come from the UK and many other countries around the world, and together with Spanish musician Javier Murugarren and Xu Rui, they create this woeful but beautiful story.
The dancers include Lauren Sheerman, Tuan Ly, Victoria Rucinska, Antonia Pantazatou, Robert Hesp, Rossana Los and Amy Grubb.
Amy Grubb also worked as the choreographer of the dance. She is a British ballet professional who now working as a freelancer in Beijing. As a solo dancer for China's rock & roll superstar Cui Jian, Amy enjoys a great fame in China's pop culture sections.
