Art in Translation: NYU Shanghai Students in Dance, Photography and Art Showcase Their Talents

A flurry of dance, music, drama performances, art, photography and tech exhibitions showcasing the talent, diversity and hard work of NYU Shanghai students closed out the Fall 2018 semester this week. Here, students perform a traditional Uighur dance, titled Heart Flutter, accompanied by the well-known Uighur folk song, Lifting Your Veil.

On December 9, students from Ballet, Contemporary, Chinese Minority & Folk, and Choreography & Performance classes, led by Professor Aly Rose and Professor Tao Siye, shared their carefully choreographed final works.

This semester’s Contemporary Dance performance, titled The Umbrella, was inspired by Shanghai’s marriage market at People’s Square Park. It tells the story of a girl forced to make a tormenting decision about whether or not to advertise her desire to find a husband.

On December 1, the Thespian Society presented All in the Past, a thrilling murder mystery intertwined with a dramatic love story set in 1930s Shanghai. [Photo by Kyle Maloney ‘21]

Lauren Benedict ‘21 directed a cast of 14. In this scene, Victor, played by Ethan Slater ‘22, explains to his girlfriend Mei, played by Ouyang Yifan ‘22, the significance of a necklace to the murder mystery. [Photo by Kyle Maloney ‘21]

Lawyer Roger, played by John Dopp ‘21 (right), proclaiming his innocence. [Photo by Kyle Maloney ‘21]

On December 6, students, faculty, and staff gathered at Art in Translation — an exhibition of works by students in Professor Barbara Edelstein and Professor Jian-Jun Zhang’s Projects in Studio Art and Introduction to Studio Art classes. Students presented contemporary experimental works in calligraphy, ink, and multimedia using traditional Chinese and other art methodologies.

Worn Impressions, by Maike Prewett ‘19, is a multimedia project and installation documenting her physical and emotional landscape through cyanotypes, rust dyeing, textile printing, film, and projection mapping. It explores the ephemerality of not only contemporary Shanghai, but also the coming-of-age experience while living here: the heightened emotional intensity of an empty apartment, the constant stream of arrivals and departures, the formative memories displaced by construction, by changing storefronts and by streets rewriting themselves.

Through the installation Behind the Wave, Milica Gligic ‘18 tried to capture the gentle and relaxed motion of open water and contrasted it with the vast amount of trash that lies below the surface.

“The trash is present but abstracted when looking through the painting. When one walks around and faces it, specific objects are recognized. This is where we admit our contribution to the problem of marine pollution,” Gligic said.