BIOGRAPHY
Manning Dong is a dancer and choreographer. After completing BA ballet performance in Shanghai Theatre Academy,she joined Suzhou Ballet as a soloist, where she won the First Prize and Best Performance Award at ballet grand prix vienna. She travelled to Austria to study contemporary dance and now compeleting her MA choreography in University of the Arts Zurich. She is also a registered trainer of Gyrokinesis®.
She was a member of the ATLAS choreography programme at the Impulstanz Festival 2024 Vienna and assistant at the Semperoper Ballet in Dresden. She has performed her own works in different places, such as Gessneralle zurich, kulturmarkt , Kunsthaus Zurich etc. She is in choreographer program with Hong Kong Ballet and Guangzhou Ballet in China 2026.
She is interested in interdisciplinary collaborative work. She uses physicality, sociality and self-exploration as choreographic tools in the hope that the public will perceive the emotional core and message of the work.
- Languages: Chinese, English, German
CONTACT
- manningdong76@gmail.com
- https://www.instagram.com/manning_dd
DIPLOMA PROJECT / THESIS
- Project title: Hard Boiled Wonderland
- Description: Taking the relationship between structure and the body as its point of departure, the work explores humanity's position and predicament within social systems and power structures. Employing installations such as seesaws, tyres, and silk, the piece constructs an unstable spatial order. It reveals how structures regulate the body while being transformed by bodily experience, ultimately pivoting towards possibilities for relational reconfiguration.
- Choreographer / Copyright: Manning Dong
- Additional Persons / Contributors: Choreography, Concept: Manning Dong / Dancer, Performer : Lucio Volcov, Marta Allocco, Vanessa Spörri, Simon Thöni (rehearsal/ research) / Stage Design, Installation: Linus Jacobson, Peiran Wang / Sound Design : Joel Gilardini / Costume Design: Samuel Bachmann, Prisca Grandi / Outside Eye: Leo Lampert, Simon Thöni
Q&A WITH MANNING DONG
What does dance mean to you?
- Dance is not merely a means of expression for me; it is who I am. What you see is the real, unguarded me—my perceptions and my body connecting with the world through movement. Our perceptions are linked through dance; they are so sensitive, fragile yet powerful. As things change, so too does our perspective on the world—a poetic magic.
Which work or choreographer particularly inspires you, and why?
- Marcos Morau, Dimitris Papaioannou, etc. The meticulous choreography, aesthetics, cruelty, poetry and sense of the absurd in their work. Through the body’s transitions between different dreamscapes and its interaction with installations and environments. these provided inspiration for my current research into the body, space and social frameworks.