The Serica Initiative had a fabulous fall afternoon this past weekend visiting our friends at the Katonah Museum of Art (KMA) and the Pocantico Center of the Rockefellers Brother Fund for an exclusive opening of the exhibit Shen Wei: STILL / MOVING! Celebrating 30 years of the career of visionary dancer, choreographer, visual artist, and director Shen Wei, we had a great time touring this dual-venue exhibition and watching a live performance of Connect/Transfer from Shen Wei Dance Arts.

Our guests travelled from Columbus Circle in Manhattan via charter bus through the breathtaking landscape of the Hudson Valley, enjoying the vivid fall foliage and peaceful scenery. 

The first stop was the Pocantico Center of the Rockefellers Brother Fund in Tarrytown, a beautiful, light-filled venue surrounded by rolling hills and greenery. Here, guests enjoyed an exhibition highlighting Shen Wei’s shan shui (“mountain water”) style paintings, which blended traditional Chinese landscape paintings with modern Western abstract movements. 

The next stop was the Katonah Museum of Art, where the outdoor space had been transformed into a beautiful natural theater, surrounded by towering pine trees. As guests gathered, Shen Wei Dance Arts performed Connect/Transfer, fusing dance and painting as the dancers and their limbs acted as paintbrushes and the floor beneath them served as their canvas.

As the breathtaking performance drew to a close, the Katonah Museum of Art’s Director and Chief Curator Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe drew Shen Wei into conversation for an artist talk about the development of his career of nearly 50 years as a multidisciplinary artist and reprising this performance of Connect/Transfer, from its debut in 2004 at the Lincoln Center Festival.

“We usually see dance broken into phrases,” Shen Wei said. “I wanted to see seamless connection, like the calligraphic movement of the paintbrush.” In creating Connect/Transfer, he envisioned a dance with that calligraphic movement but without the paintbrush—instead transferring that seamless movement through the body of the dancer.

Following the performance, Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe shared a surprise opportunity from Shen Wei—the canvas of the Connect/Transfer performance would be curated and divided into pieces by Shen Wei and the KMA staff, and would be auctioned off for guests who wished to take home a rare and unique memento of their experience. 

In the meantime, the KMA opened up the galleries for viewing, which featured Shen Wei’s more recent paintings, where he moved beyond abstraction of form and shape to explore dimensions of texture, spirituality, and feeling as a further development of his abstract work. 

As nighttime settled on the journey with Shen Wei: STILL / MOVING, guests mingled and enjoyed his art, bid on pieces of the Connect/Transfer canvas, and eventually settled back in on the bus for our journey back to Manhattan!

Thanks again to all who attended this unforgettable afternoon exploring Shen Wei’s visionary career as a choreographer, dancer, visual artist, and director! Many thanks as well to the staff at the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Katonah Museum of Art for graciously hosting us. And of course, many thanks to Shen Wei and Shen Wei Dance Arts for the opportunity to celebrate beautiful visual art and performance!

Join our community at the Serica Initiative to continue amplifying Asian America through storytelling, empowerment, and convening. We’d love to have you join us at our next event! ⭐