Tang Quixote

唐吉诃德


Guangdong Dance Festival 2025

Documentary/Dance Theatre

Choreographer/Director/Actor: Chen Tang
Dramaturgie: Hongchang Xu

Visual Designer: Bing
Music Designer: JiN
Assistant Choreographer: Apricot Guo

Venue: Guangdong Modern Dance Company
Date: Sept 22, 2025
Duration: 50 mins

 

Tang Quixote is an autobiographical work by dancer Chen Tang. He was born in a migrant worker family in Qingtang Village, Taojiang County, Hunan Province, China.

The term “migrant workers”(known as “农民工” in Chinese) emerged since the economic opening of the PRC in the 1970s. As the need for workers in urban areas grew, massive numbers of rural laborers left their children behind and entered cities to earn a living. Kids like Tang, who grew up with grandparents or other relatives in their hometowns, were then known as “left-behind Children” in China.

本剧剧名是以作者的姓和塞万提斯不朽名作《堂吉诃德》主人公的名共同组合而成。通过讲述作者在农村和城市之间的游荡经历,我们试图提出这么一个问题:在当代,我们怎么像堂吉诃德一样,用新的视角看待原有的身份,从而在不断地流动中找到自己的新身份?

Unfolded with Tang’s narrative in Taojiang accent, this dance theatre is a parallel of Tang’s “left-behind” Childhood and his 10-year “migrant dancer” experience. Partly because of the Chinese “Hukou” system (a system of residence and household registration that constrains rural residents’ influx into cities by setting barriers to urban schooling, medical care, and public facilities), Tang discovered he could never be a citizen both economically and mentally.

After years of working in several cities in China, Tang finds himself, as an migrant worker, actually living like a public bike. Combined with the capitalist society, the discriminatory system that produced migrant workers is actually working the same as a bike-share system: he has no right to select where he wants to work and live, while his body could be shaped into whatever the capital wants.

 Photo  ©林小怡  

In a powerful segment, he “invites” a watermelon to be his dance partner, revealing the similarities between the fruit and migrant workers. Both originate in rural areas, both have their bodies shaped for urban consumption, and both face the constant risk of being discarded.

So how does an individual find a way out of this reality? Tang finds his answer in the source of his production’s name: the novel “Don Quixote.” While it is difficult for one person to change society, the courage to resist surrender and the humor to transform dark realities into a shared joke remain profoundly important for us all.

 Trailer of Tang Quixote  ©Chen Tang

《唐吉诃德》预告片 (无法访问请点击此处观看)

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