The Living Dance Studio is the pioneer of contemporary independent dance in Beijing. It was founded and is led by choreographer Wen Hui and documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang. "Memory", an eight-hour performance, is based on memories of China's Cultural Revolution, which took place more than 40 years ago. Choreographer Wen Hui lets her childhood memories come alive on stage, using words and music. Together with actress Feng Dehua she delves into the subject of the creative force of the body's memory, whatever the mind suppresses, but which the memory has written into every cell of the body. Blending historical events with contemporary aesthetics, she exposes the body as a living archive that has preserved traces of its own past and refers to the future.
The oversized net on stage is modelled on the mosquito net of her childhood memories. At that time it hung over the bed on which she presented her first performances to her family. Projected onto the fine cloth of the net, old family pictures and their stories blend in with images of Wu Wenguang's documentary "1966, My Time in the Red Guards" (1993) - displaying the incidents of the Cultural Revolution from the point of view of five Red Guards.
