Will of Water

How does one become a "shooting star" in dance? What is that? This term is being used to advertise guest choreographer Xie Xin in Bern. The advertising slogan probably means that the Chinese choreographer creates better pieces than many others, that she's booked frequently, in Venice, Paris, Hamburg ... and even in Moscow. That she's an astonishing personality. Perhaps also that she's a woman, finally (again) a successful one, who doesn't rely on overpowering staging. With Xie Xin, there's no such thing as a "shooting star" in the sense of suddenly appearing.

Beginnings Upon Beginnings
At 40, she is a superb dancer; at any moment, she can be anywhere with her fingertips, feet, shoulders, pelvis, and head. She is incredibly soft and resilient. She has always been tireless and emphasizes in conversation that she has been given opportunities, which she has seized. Born in 1985, she belongs to the generation of artists in China who were able to benefit from cultural openness and mutual intercontinental curiosity at the right moment. A stroke of luck. Two of her European career moments have names attached to them: Bruno Heynderickx and Delta Danse.

Her mother was a dance teacher. Her parents divorced. There was no prosperity in the house in Ji'an in the southwestern province of Jiangxi. Xie Xin only hints at this in interviews. She never complains. When things got difficult, she didn't give up. It always made her grow, as she puts it. She was the child who had always danced. The one who surprised her mother at home with a choreography. From her, she learned Chinese folk dances with their connection to traditional culture. "Roots," she says. Her mother was against a career in dance. It wasn't a secure job! The girl was stubborn. At 13, she applied to an art school and was accepted. Later, she graduated from the Guangdong Dance School. There she also learned Western techniques, ballet, and modern. She graduated in 2004. Ten years followed with renowned companies that also perform here: Guangdong Modern Dance Company, Jin Xing Dance Theatre, the transgender choreographer's company in Shanghai, Tao Dance Theatre, and BeijingDance/LDTX. There, she also experienced foreign choreographers, but it took time to become a good dancer, "to open my eyes, my head, my heart, and become whole. The energy, everything comes together."

Seeing the World
She went to festivals, won competitions in China, in Europe, and on television shows. She gave some of the prize money to her mother. A subsequent gold medal earned her a four-month scholarship abroad. She chose New York, Berlin, and Paris, seeing all the performances and taking classes. "Nothing is impossible," she realized. She didn't know what contemporary dance was, she says. She wanted to learn it. Until she understood: "It's not a style, it's the way you think about your body and how your ideas flow through your body." She returned.

Thinking, learning, never standing still, heading into the unknown. That's how she lives. "Waking up every morning with a question. Going to the studio, having fun, working hard, not conserving my energy. Even if I don't find the answers." The self-determined philosopher: "No one tells me what to do." Back then, in America, she learned about gravity and the relaxation techniques — "release." This is evident in her extremely varied partnering; no two duets are the same. Lifting becomes gliding upwards. Falling becomes plunging into the shell of the ground. While working with an Israeli choreographer, Xie Xin says, she learned musicality, listening down to the smallest details. This creates something "that is more than movement." Sometimes she searches for words; her English apparently can only inadequately convey the wealth of thoughts and their subtleties. She also jumps through time periods or folds them onto one another, as if everything were happening simultaneously.

She studied Tai Chi and "Tao, the philosophy from ancient China," according to which soft is stronger than strong. Xie Xin's dance styles resemble waves spreading from a single point — a never-ending, sometimes languid, sometimes lively flow. Even lying down, stopping, becoming a sculpture seems to flow. A striving upward, alone or with others being lifted, is often seen in her pieces, but never an arm stretched out to the fingertips. These bodies join in a pull upwards or hope for it, like singers who hit the note that in fact hits them.

The body is always permeated, everything reacts to everything. Xie Xin: "I'm interested in the active, but I focus on the passive. You do this, and what will naturally follow? Something you can't see directly. It's never just one thing, but many. That's also why I became a choreographer. Because there is something we can't express, but we feel it." It's not movement, but energy, something that drives your body to experience, to perceive."

At the Right Moment
In 2014, Xie Xin founded her own private company in Shanghai: Xiexin Dance Theatre. Today, she manages a staff of 20 people, including 12 dancers with full-time contracts, which is important to her. She also runs educational programs, engages guest choreographers with other styles, and commissions works for companies outside of China. She also directs a festival and runs a fashion label. And she has a child. In 2015, Xie Xin suddenly appeared in Wiesbaden. She replaced the renowned Yabin Wang in her leading role in the guest performance of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Genesis. She had been invited by Bruno Heynderickx, who had noticed her as a dancer a few years earlier before becoming curator of the Hessian State Ballet in 2014. At the time, Xie Xin spoke with him about her vision for her own company. In 2016, at a dance platform in Hong Kong, the well-traveled man saw her From IN, invited it to Hesse in 2019, and then T.I.M.E. in 2023. Since 2019, he has let her work with the State Ballet in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden on creations, first a short piece, Special Moment, then Timeless in the three-part program Timelessness, and finally Broken Sense of Beauty in the two-part Broken Bob.

Mind of Heart
"Her movement language is completely different from anything I've seen in Europe so far." As curating director (since 2020), Heynderickx is constantly seeking choreographic voices that are still missing from the "European repertoire". This "unique signature" is also what prompted the French dance agency "Delta Danse" to offer its services to Xie Xin in the summer of 2019, explains employee Mathilde Pailley. It was the right moment for both sides. Business for art: Since "Delta Danse" signs the contracts with the theaters and festivals, the bureaucratic burden is reduced. "In Europe, you don't normally see such an aesthetic, her sensitivity, this approach to movement. Very organic and from within, with a very deep center and always connected to something spiritual. The connection with emotion, you feel that. We don't have her cultural background, which makes her approach to certain topics interesting." To see the big in the small, the calm in the storm, the past in the present, the inside.

From IN was presented at the "Tanz Karlsruhe" festival at the Tempel cultural center in late 2024. It begins with Xie Xin reclining and trickles back to the same spot at the end. Meanwhile her figure connects with another, then with many, until she becomes one of many, then again the one whose inner images or lives these are, were, and will be. With the support of the China Dancers Association, the choreographer was able to create this first full-length piece in 2014. It became the signature creation of her company which her husband manages.

In 2020, Xie Xin gave birth to a daughter. The dancer, who had previously mastered everything, developed back problems, lost her center, and her sense of body. "But mentally, it made me stronger. Also a gift for life." Giving life. Then the catastrophe. On 29 December 2023, a fire destroyed her studio. Soon, it will be rebuilt, bigger, better. Feeling the blows, the pain, the anger, the hope, the despite. Memory, faith, beauty, fractures. She builds her choreographies from such experiences. She speaks a lot about the "mind of heart".

Xie Xin's next world premiere can be seen as part of the three-part series Twilight, along with works by Lesley Telford and Marioenrico d'Angelo, at the Ballet Bern. From 26 April; www.buehnenbern.ch