極度中間 – 熵身體製作 Entropic Body Production

What does it mean to be extremely in the middle ?

The first time I heard about this expression was from a bad trip using magic mushroom and pot together. In that trip, as we were suffering in a dark mental swirl, I had a trippy discussion with my Dutch partner. He addressed a concept from a German saying “Jeder konsequenz fuhrt zum teufel (All extremity leads to devil)”, to exaggerate how bad our experience was.

The next day I shared this concept to a senior Dutch lady . She gave me a very interesting feedback, which I never think of from my education . “The philosopher who said this must be Catholic or Christian. If he put it in this way, what would he say about extremely in the middle?” She said. It lights up a reflection on myself, as I always regard all matters should be moderate.

The concept of extremely in the middle relates me to the ancient philosophy of Tai-Chi and of the golden mean by Confucianism, with which I was educated.Tai-Chi refers to the very beginning of the universe, and the essential rule/truth of everything and every relationship , which is called Dao. From the symbol, it may look binary, but actually it reconciles the two energy “ Ying and Yang”, and they represent the intergraded balance of all matters.

On the other hand, the golden mean by Confucius has somehow been a struggle for me. As I observe and realise from my life experience, this very principle of being moderate doesn’t get anyone any where but to make people become very easy to train or even to manipulate. It is easy to be judged if someone stands out or acts too much under standard of being moderate, and it causes lots of anxiety and stress when people are not allowed to expand and extent who they really are in this cultural invisible bonds, especially in Asia.

In this dance video, I want to portrait it as a horror film, addressing all sorts of shady status of being in the void of middle.I discuss what it means to be extremely in the middle to my dancers/co-creators. They offer many interesting interpretations that relate to their backgrounds:

Shan-refined balance
Ming-in the status of spacing out/nothing in mind
Alisha-like everybody is screaming at you, but you are in totally zen
Heidi-nothing right nothing wrong/ in between being rational and being sensible
Emily- consistency and regularity
Chi- obsessive-compulsive disorder
Yan-hypocrisy (because nothing can be extremely in the middle unless you make it that way )
DiDi-one in all; all in one
Tanya- at the moment of falling asleep ( fading consciousness)

According to their perspectives,I can see how deep the ancient philosophy and the religion are affecting us. We are programmed semi human beings by the moderate norm of this society. Most of people are half way to their dreams, half way to their success, half way to their favourite choices, half way to their death, and half way to their whole beings. Eventually, we became half humans and half creatures stuck in the void of extreme middle. The kinds of creatures are so mysterious that we don't even know how we shape ourselves into those.

Creative Team