British Chinese musician and composer LIZ LIEW – Snapshots

British Chinese musician and composer LIZ LIEW and Taiwanese choreographer/dancer YUYU RAU are unveiling their new piece ‘Snapshots’ at The Place’s Resolution! Festival on Saturday 12 January 2013. Their show is part of a triple bill also featuring David Willdridge and Attach Dance Company.

Featuring live music and dance, ‘Snapshots’ is a personal exploration of emotions around key moments in Liew’s life, told through Chinese classical and contemporary dance, an evocative live original soundtrack on piano, violin and Chinese instrumentation and video imagery. Liz Liew, who was recently selected as one of the composers for New Music 20×12, a UK wide celebration of new music as part of the Cultural Olympiad, commented:

‘It’s my most personal piece to date and I’ve used as sources of inspiration my own personal memories of childhood, first love, the sudden passing of my father and the birth of my daughters – these become universal themes that we can all relate to’.

‘Snapshots’ is the first collaboration between Liew and choreographer Rau, who brings the stories of each snapshot to life, using a blend of dance styles including contemporary, Chinese Classical Dance and martial arts. Fragments of each story gradually unravel through cinematic flashbacks as Rau portrays the stories, emotions and music through dance taking audiences on an evocative visual and aural journey, allowing them to reflect on their own experiences. The musical soundtrack is part filmic, with nods to Impressionist composers Debussy and Ravel, mixed with melodies inspired from Liew’s British Chinese background. Scored mostly for the piano with the addition of the violin and piano, Liew will be joined live by Dennis Lee on Chinese flute (xiao) and Chinese zither (guzheng).

LIZ CHI YEN LIEW is a musician and composer whose music blends rhythms and melodies inspired by her Chinese roots on Chinese instruments with electric violins and electronics. As one half of violin duo Chi2 she performed and co-wrote Monkey King – A Modern Beijing Opera a brand new spin on the classic Chinese tale which they toured in the UK in 2008-9. Other commissions include co-writing the soundtrack to Time is Like Water Flowing a poetic evocation of the four seasons collaborating with French aerial acrobatic group Les Passagers and Chinese visual artists for Greenwich and Docklands International Festival with performances in London’s O2 Arena. As one of PRS for Music Foundation’s selected composers for New Music 20×12 (part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad) her piece XX/XY premiered to 12,000 people at Trafalgar Square in January 2012, was featured on BBC2’s Review Show and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

As a session musician she has toured/recorded/performed with Moby, Lamb, Gnarls Barkley, Asian Dub Foundation, Goldfrapp, Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra amongst others.

YUYU RAU trained in ballet, contemporary and Chinese classical dance in Taiwan and she taught at Cloud Gate Dance School before moving to the UK in 2006. Yuyu obtained an MA in Performance Dance at University of Chichester in 2008 and won Stepping East 2010 – British East Asian Choreographer showcase, commissioned by Step Out Arts. She has worked with a number of prestigious choreographers such as Wayne McGregor, Javier De Frutos and Luca Silvestrini. She has also danced for productions at Sadler’s Wells and ROH2 – recently Hetain Patel’s much acclaimed show ‘Be Like Water’. Yuyu’s choreographic work explores a fascination, for the artist, with the aesthetics of inter-cultural dance work that stems from her own experience of living in a different culture in the UK.