The choreodrama Deep in Memory takes as its principal thread Iris Chang’s investigation into the 1937 Nanking Massacre and is built, as a theme, around the recollections of those who lived through it. Working from key terms — the killing, the witnessing, the contrition, the denial — the piece composes chapters that stand on their own and, at the same time, confirm one another. From these different angles, all of them point to a single truth, and re-enact the historical record. The choreography uses a direct and powerful dance language to seize the moments of intense emotion in each character and the points of acute psychological tension, expressing in many layers the changes of feeling and inner state, and reaching, with shocking force, into the part of memory that cannot be forgotten.
Set against the international register of the stage design, the work reads almost like a stage documentary. The well-known dramatist and Vice-Chairman of the China Theatre Association, Luo Huai, has noted: “Deep in Memory is a work of large frame, capable of going out into the world.” The piece is written and directed by Tong Ruirui and performed by the Dance Drama Theatre of the Jiangsu Performing Arts Group; Tang Shiyi and Li Yiran each take the role of Iris Chang. With Iris, John Rabe, Minnie Vautrin, Li Xiuying, and Higashi Shirō as the principal historical figures, the piece moves through Iris’s view to draw forth the recollections of those who lived through the Nanking Massacre — to mourn, by way of this work, the suffering and the wound of a people, to awaken the memory of history, and to convey the meaning of peace.
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