I WANNA BE (MADE)

In 2005, Cornelia Rainer was a guest student at the National Junior College of Performing Arts in Taipei, where she gained insight into the various disciplines – acting, martial arts, singing, dancing, and acrobatics – of Peking Opera.

Later, she encounters the Chinese dancer Yang Ji (Yutong) in Vienna, who was trained as a Chinese dancer at a dance academy in Shanyeng. Yang Ji learned how to train her body like a machine, how to hide pain, and how to combat homesickness. Much of what she experienced fits into the image often depicted in the West of China: a land of economic miracle, with turbo capitalism and emerging markets, where ambition and drill determine life.

Despite all the foreignness, the story of Yang Ji and the students from Taipei overlaps with our reality to a certain extent. Therefore, on stage, Yang Ji meets children and teenagers from Vienna. Many of the questions that accompanied Yang Ji as a teenager arise here as well: What do I want to become? What images do I have of myself? How do I deal with envy and feelings of competition? Am I ambitious? Does my body conform to the ideal of beauty? Where are my limits? How do I react to failures and successes? How do I find my path? What do I dream of?

A piece about courage, self-confidence, fear, discipline, beauty ideals, and the uncertainty of one’s own future.