Dance with Farm Workers

Dance with Farm Workers is a documentary about a rather unconventional performance of the same name (unconventional inasmuch as the project involved not only actors and dancers, but also 30 Beijing farm workers from the poorer regions of Sichuan province). In addition, both the rehearsals and performance took place in the production hall of a former textile factory that had been threatened to be demolished as a result of Beijing’s modernization project, as had thousands of such production halls before it. The superbly fit farm laborers, who had come to the city when they had lost hope that conditions would improve at home, have been the supporting pillars of this modernization. The performance was initiated and organized by choreographer Wen Hui and artists Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen, and Wu Wenguang. They invited 10 professional dancers and actors, three of them (a French woman and two Americans) are foreigners residing in Beijing, as well as 30 farm laborers working on building sites around Beijing, whose initial sole wish was to be paid 30 yuan a day (this was promptly fulfilled). It was only some time later that they discovered that they, the “lowest of the low”, would be standing at center stage.