From the premiere performance of the Ballet Wu Tian Yuan, 30-31 March 2013 in the Theatre of Xiao Ke, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China. Choreographer: Dr. Johan Stjernholm. Performers: Deirdre Fu and Wendy Chen. "O mournful god forlorn! You inexhaustible trace! Only because rancor broke and strewed you through nature have we learned to hear, become the mouth of creation's face" (From "The Sonnets to Orpheus", by Rainer Maria Rilke). What does it mean to name something? What does it mean to hear the name? Can existence be perceived without words, or is the process of naming the actual 'mouth of creation', a necessary calling forth of new things into being? Am I an utterance? Or could 'I' exist without being pronounced? The work questions the conventionally perceived role and function of language: instead of naming a phenomenon, phenomena are derived from practices of naming, as if already there... strewed through nature.

• published: 19 May 2013
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