Waltz
Zhu Jia
朱加
Production date
2013
Object Detail
Media
digital video (colour, sound)
Measurements
10 min 11 sec
Notes
Waltz (2013) is based on Zhu Jia’s family history. Zhu’s parents divorced when he was very young, and he was fascinated by their stories of the past, and his imaginings of their possible futures. His mother grew up during the period of Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and attended a Japanese school. His father, a bank clerk, loved to dance, but during the Cultural Revolution ballroom dancing was forbidden. Zhu says, ‘The history of my family echoes the history of the revolution in China.’ In his evocative video we watch a pigtailed young woman and an older man, both dressed in drab Zhongshan suits and cloth shoes, dancing awkwardly to the rhythms of a revolutionary opera, their bodies deliberately held away from each other. The act of assuming the waltz position was in itself a dangerously anti-revolutionary act at a time when all such bourgeois pastimes were taboo. The camera zooms in on the ‘Red Lantern’ brand radio and lidded teacup in a dusty office, evocative signs of a difficult moment in Chinese history. The scene changes to reveal the same man preening in front of a mirror, dressed in the sharp Western fashions of the 1930s, and waltzing with an imaginary partner to the strains of a jazz band. Time switches from the present to the past and back again, challenging the desire for a linear narrative. A watcher in the doorway appears in both past and present: is it the artist, observing his parents’ generation, seeking to understand?
Accession number
2014.056