Since 2023, as part of Summer for the City, Lincoln Center has presented an international arts week—the first three feted Korea, India, and Brazil. This summer, Chinese Arts Week takes center stage, starting July 22, with more than a dozen performances on Lincoln Center’s outdoor plazas as well as in indoor venues. 

Mengtong Guan, Associate Director on the Artistic Programming team at Lincoln Center and curator of this year’s edition, discussed several Chinese Arts Week events, many of which are distinguished by the art of collaboration. As part of the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance, there’s MindScape, a brand new cross-cultural, cross-national, and cross-temporal work in which the legendary Shen Wei Dance Arts returns to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the company’s first appearance at Lincoln Center. This joint performance teams Shen Wei with Guangdong Modern Dance Company as well as local dancers (July 22–25, Hearst Plaza). 

“Shen Wei’s relationship with Guangdong Modern Dance Company goes back many years,” Guan says. “When he brought this piece to us with the idea to perform with Chinese and local dancers, we saw it as a great opportunity that all the stars aligned for.”

Composer Ian Chang—who got two Oscar nominations for co-scoring the 2022 best picture winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once—brings his wide-ranging concert titled Living Music to the David Rubenstein Atriumon July 22. Chang’s performance is part of Nadia Sirota’s Living Music Atrium series, so it could also be considered a collaboration, Guan notes, adding, “I’m excited about his show, since it’s a retrospective and a glimpse into the future all at once,” including selections from his earlier work and previews of new projects.

For Guan, one of Chinese Arts Week’s most anticipated events is the North American premiere of The Ocean Etched in the Forest, the brainchild of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun and her regular collaborator Julian Crouch, for two performances at Alice Tully Hall on July 24. A meaningful collaboration between Du Yun and National Intangible Cultural Heritage Bearer of the Jino People Master Guiying He, The Ocean Etched in the Forest is an imaginative retelling of the ancient oral traditions of the Jino people. Master He taught these traditions to, and performs with, several Jino village children.

“Du Yun spent a few months every year in the past few years to visit a remote village of the Jino people to learn their music and traditions—and to make friends as well,” Guan explains. “Seeing this collaboration come together with these young performers, who have also become lasting friends, makes it more meaningful than just putting performances on the stage.”

The Ocean Etched in the Forest (which also includes Du Yun’s NYC-based band OK Miss) is part of the initiative Future Tradition, a platform she created to bring traditional practitioners into conversations with modern music and create new works. “We used our resources to work with them and to have them teach young children from the local village, who are all amateur performers,” Du Yun notes. “These kids along with Master He are all from remote Jino villages, in China’s Yunnan Province, located in the rainforest near the border with Laos and Myanmar. Their Jino ethnicity was only officially recognized by China in 1979.”

Highlighting the children’s heritage through their singing of nearly forgotten local folk songs is only one of the threads of the complex tapestry of The Ocean Etched in the Forest, according to Du Yun. “We are also speaking of the environment, hence the title. The ocean is a metaphor for these kids. They want to see the sea for the first time in real life,” she explains. “It’s their yearning for something faraway, something almost unattainable, that becomes both the drama as well as the metaphor. It’s a glimpse of their authentic selves.”

Chinese Arts Week also includes a Silent Disco featuring the electronic duo TAIGA (July 25, The Dance Floor) as well as a Tai Chi class in The Art of Wellbeing with New York-Presbyterian and Theater Storytime presented by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (July 22, Karen and Richard LeFrak Lobby, David Geffen Hall). And, as part of China Institute of America’s centennial, the eye-opening documentary About Face: Disrupting Ballet chronicles efforts to end long-standing Asian stereotypes in the dance world (July 23, David Rubenstein Atrium) as well as more programs. 

For more info on Chinese Arts Week, visit here.