Performance scratch 2025.10
Rehearsal with Xie Rong, Daniel York Loh and Beibei Wang
Parts of Mountains and Seas – Song of Today 山海 · 今日之歌 workshop session
Parts of Mountains and Seas – Song of Today 山海 · 今日之歌 workshop session
As organiser and director, Echo shapes the musical and sonic landscape of the work through the philosophy of 五行, the Five Elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Sound is approached not as fixed structure, but as energy in continuous transformation. It flows, burns, erodes, and regenerates, responding to the emotional and physical states within the performance.
Echo understands sound not as abstract material, but as emotion, character, and storytelling. This perspective is deeply informed by her upbringing with traditional Chinese opera, where singing, movement, visual design, and narrative exist as one inseparable form.
As she describes,
“Every tone carries movement, and every movement contains its own silence.”
Within this work, sound functions as a living presence. It listens, reacts, and holds memory, guiding the unfolding relationship between concealment and revelation, grief and awakening.
This work explores the somatic memory passed down through matrilineal lines. By utilizing Fossil Paper, I materialize the fragility and endurance of silence.
We are offered with different materials to make structure or sculpture.I used bamboo sticks as it was the origianl raw material for writing Nüshu.
And I used calligraphy and fan to dance.
Here Echo covered her face, silently sitting in the corner in the silver river made from fossil paper.
I used my fan to dane to wake her up and unveil her.
Hug and crying.
And I used calligraphy and fan to dance.
Here Echo covered her face, silently sitting in the corner in the silver river made from fossil paper.
I used my fan to dane to wake her up and unveil her.
Hug and crying.
Using bamboo sticks, I constructed a monumental female figure formed through Nüshu script. The structure slowly took the shape of a woman, fragile yet enduring, held together through balance, tension, and care. She stood as a presence rather than an object, a mother figure composed of writing, memory, and accumulated time.
I danced with calligraphy and a fan.
Writing moved through my body and unfolded into gesture. The fan opened and closed with my breath, guiding the rhythm of the dance. Each movement carried an act of calling, as if language could leave the page and return to the body that once held it.
Writing moved through my body and unfolded into gesture. The fan opened and closed with my breath, guiding the rhythm of the dance. Each movement carried an act of calling, as if language could leave the page and return to the body that once held it.
Echo sat silently in the corner. Her face was covered. She remained still, surrounded by a silver river made from fossil paper. The river held the weight of time, like memory pressed into matter, quiet and immovable. She was present, yet unreachable.
I danced toward her with the fan. The movement became a slow summoning, a repeated attempt to wake, to reach, to remember. Through the unfolding of the fan, I called her back into visibility. Her face was gradually unveiled.
We met.
We held each other.
Grief surfaced without words.
We cried.
We held each other.
Grief surfaced without words.
We cried.
This moment was not a resolution, but a recognition. In As mother as daughter, the body becomes a site of return, where loss, care, and tenderness coexist, and where mother and child meet again through movement, writing, and shared silence.
As who I am, the non existent daughter.
As many of her.
As who I am, the non existent daughter.
As many of her.
