II. History： Mining and Miners｜Disaster｜Local Memory

The historical context of the work is rooted in the mining culture of Jinguashi. The miner represents male labor, physical endurance, and the pressures imposed upon the male body.

One account describes this experience：

“The son of a miner speaks of a masculine pressure that, like being trapped deep inside a mine tunnel, cannot be escaped…”

This connection between mining history and masculine labor opens up a dialogue with the work’s exploration of gender, family, and social expectations.

The work’s thematic trajectory：

Mine → Labor → Male Roles → Family → Gendered Pressure

The history of the mine therefore extends beyond a historical narrative. It becomes a way of thinking about how labor, gender roles, family structures, and emotional pressure are inscribed upon the body.

III. Memory: Family｜Two Generations of Women｜Emotion

Another central concern of This Old House is the experience of women within the structures of family and society.Marriage, family, social roles, female identity, and emotional constraints intersect within the space of the “home.”The house is therefore more than a physical structure. It becomes a space where personal memory and social expectations overlap—a place in which women’s lives, relationships, and identities are shaped, remembered, and negotiated.The work looks across two generations of women, allowing individual memories to intersect with broader questions of family, gender, and emotional inheritance.

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III. Memory: Family｜Two Generations of Women｜Emotion

Another central concern of This Old House is the experience of women within the structures of family and society.Marriage, family, social roles, female identity, and emotional constraints intersect within the space of the “home.”The house is therefore more than a physical structure. It becomes a space where personal memory and social expectations overlap—a place in which women’s lives, relationships, and identities are shaped, remembered, and negotiated.The work looks across two generations of women, allowing individual memories to intersect with broader questions of family, gender, and emotional inheritance.

IV. How the Dancers’ Bodies Respond to the Site

1. Mountain Slopes and Stone Steps

The dancers must respond to changes in elevation, stone steps, uneven ground, walking speed, gravity, and bodily balance.

Dance movements therefore do not exist independently from the environment. Rather, they are continually shaped and transformed by the physical conditions of the terrain.

The landscape becomes an active choreographic partner.

2. Wind and Rain

The environment itself becomes part of the choreography.

For example, a sudden gust of wind from the mountains can blow over a clothes rack.

Such an unexpected event is not necessarily treated as an interruption. Instead, it becomes part of the performance.

3. Natural Environment → Transformation of Objects → Transformation of Space → Transformation of Performance

The changing environment creates a chain of transformations:

Natural Environment → Object → Space → Performance

V. Objects: Red Fabric, White Fabric, and Clothes Racks

1. Clothes Racks

The clothes rack originated from the image of a picture frame or framework—a window, a frame, or a boundary.

The dancers and clothes racks together create temporary frames within the space.

As the racks are continuously moved, overturned, rearranged, and repositioned, the initially fixed performance space begins to shift.

The object therefore possesses a space-generating function:

Clothes Rack → Red Fabric → Room / Spatial Configuration

The clothes rack is no longer simply a prop. It becomes a device for constructing and transforming space.

2. White Fabric

The white fabric has a strong association with the female body.

It evokes ideas of the female body, marriage, social propriety, prescribed feminine roles, and forms of constraint that are difficult to escape.

The white fabric therefore carries a duality:

Beauty / Constraint
Purity / Discipline
Marriage / Restriction

Through the female body, the fabric becomes a material representation of the social and emotional structures surrounding women.

3. Red Fabric

Red carries symbolic associations with traditional feminine culture, such as red headscarves, wedding banners, red floral decorations, and red bridal quilts.

It therefore becomes connected to the different stages of a woman’s life.

When the movable clothes racks carrying red fabric travel through the space, the dancers are effectively reorganizing and reconstructing the spatial environment.

Through this process, the work moves beyond dance as movement and enters the realm of spatial theatre.

VI. Audience: Moving and Watching within the Space of Jinguashi Shrine

At the Jinguashi Shrine, the audience does not remain in a fixed viewing position.

They may：

• observe from a distance;

• move closer to the dancers;

• walk through the performance space;

• look at the surrounding architectural ruins;

• simultaneously see the dancers and the mountain landscape;

• and ultimately become part of the spatial environment themselves.

The audience is therefore not simply a group of spectators. They can also be understood as participants in a spatial experience.

This approach resonates with Peter Brook’s concept of “The Empty Space”: when a person crosses a space under another person’s gaze, an act of theatre can emerge.

In This Old House, performed within the Jinguashi Shrine, theatre is generated through the relationship between:

Dancers + Audience + Action → Theatrical Space

Theatre does not necessarily begin with a stage. It can emerge through the relationship between the body, the site, and the act of looking.

The audience moves from simply watching a performance to entering the work itself.

This shift is one of the central theatrical concepts of This Old House.

VII. Landscape: Mountains, Mist, Rain, and Ruins

1. Natural Landscape

The mountains, mist, and rain are not merely elements of the natural environment.

The mountain is not simply a mountain. It is a place where stories once happened—a landscape carrying layers of human experience and memory.

2. Historical Landscape

An old house is not merely architecture.

It becomes a container of family memories, while ruins become a kind of body left behind by history—physical traces through which the past continues to exist in the present.

3. Psychological Landscape

The work ultimately creates a connection between:

Family → Body → Memory → Place → History

Through this trajectory, This Old House transforms the idea of “home” from a physical structure into a complex landscape of memory, gender, bodily experience, emotion, and history.