Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal / Taiwan
Nien Tzu Weng | 翁念慈
《{光 (陰 | 影)}之∞》── [guāng yīn] the lightest dark is darker than the darkest light
dance + new media art performance + video
April 9 — 12, 2025
7:30 pm
90 minutes
CREDITS
Nien Tzu Weng
Artistic Direction + Scenographer + Choreographer
Marie-Audrey Jacques
Material Consultant + Scenographer + Costume Designer
Vjosana Shkurti
Filmmaker
Isaac Chanoki Endo
Rope Fabrication/Specialist + Assistant Scenographer + 3D Scan Technician + Rigging
Dae Courtney
Sound Designer
Baco Lepage-Acosta
Video Mapping
Justin de Luna
Movement Coach
Myriam Bleau
Laser Girl
Timothy Thomasson + Milo Reinhardt + Ahmed Drebika
Mixed Reality / 3D Animation Artist
Paul Chambers
Light Consultant
Naoto Hieda
Virtual performance support + Digital caregiver
Winnie Ho
Outside Eye
Presented by MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) and Danse-Cité
Co-produced by Nien Tzu Weng, Danse-Cité and MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nien Tzu Weng is a Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary dance artist and lighting designer based in Montreal. She builds bridges between disciplines, pursuing an experimental approach to contemporary performance, and a laboratory-based approach to lighting design. As both choreographer and lighting designer, she focuses on presence and interactivity, curious about the relationship between movement and new media practices. She plays the balance between reality and fantasy working with light and multimedia material to tinker with perspective. Nien Tzu perceives performance as a process of transmitting dialogues between inner and outer space, where presence and image builds multiple, overlapping conceptions of time.
Nien Tzu completed her BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University (2018). She received a danceWeb Scholarship in 2023 (AT), a Mécènes investi·es pour les arts prize and a CAM/La Chapelle residency in new artistic practices in 2019, an OFFTA Hybridity Award, an undergraduate research award and a contemporary dance prize in 2018 , and the James Saya Award in 2015.
Her projects have been presented internationally at Flipchart (The Hague, NL), Node Digital Festival (Frankfurt, DE), Biennale Némo (Paris, FR) and Ars Electronica (Linz, AUT), as well as in Canada at IN/ON/ OUT INTERARTS (Winnipeg, MB), SummerWorks (Toronto, ON), 1-ACT Fest (Vancouver, BC), and in Montréal at OFFTA, Elektra, Akousma, Tangente Danse, La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines and Montréal, intercultural arts.
“光” [guāng] means “light” and “陰” [yīn] means “negative” or “shade.” Together, they form “光陰” [guāngyīn], “time.”
After 15 years in Canada, Nien Tzu Weng goes back in time. The journey is crucial; she must experience what she missed in the past to understand why she had to leave in the first place. After all, when one escapes, a new narrative takes form.
In “{光 (陰 | 影)}之∞” (Guāng Yīn): The Lightest Dark is Darker Than the Darkest Light, Weng deconstructs the cultural underpinnings of her movement practices, experimenting with a body identity connected to ancient Taoist concepts. Through the body’s yin and yang aspects, she bridges inner and outer worlds, physical and virtual spaces. The result is an immersive performance where dance, gestures, memory-igniting scenery, luminous robots, and personas intertwine in a layered dreamscape.
Warning
Nudity
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When past and future meet, what timezone do we live in?
The journey Nien Tzu invites us on is a crucial one; she revisits ancestral traditions while playing with the materials and textures of the future to allow a new narrative to emerge, creating a futuristic dream whose existence remains uncertain.
Somewhere between art and introspective documentary, invoking recreated landscapes she has carried with her from Taiwan, this project explores themes of nostalgia and homeland, playing with lighting materials and sound objects to unfold and express the density and intensity of memories.
Blending performance with futuristic visual compositions, this immersive experience transports audiences into a dreamlike world, where science fiction meets manga. The team of digital artists, videographers, sound designers, video mapping creators and augmented reality experts created a prolific transdisciplinary and multidimensional project, an immersive portal through time and space.
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+ Friday, April 11th
Talkback with the artist
coming up at MAI
A HOLE IS A HOLE IS A HOLE IS
Ton Bogataj + Christopher Ramm + Marco Merenda
dance + performance
April 24 — 26, 2025