Anneliese Charek

Dance

Anneliese Charek

United states/china

Anneliese Charek is a choreographer, dancer and producer from Los Angeles who has been based in Shanghai for some years. 

She was trained at the Performing Arts Center in Classical Ballet at the start of her career, and then graduated from California Institute of the Arts with a B.F.A. in dance (performance, choreography and production). She then joined the Li ChiaoPing dance company as a full time touring dancer for two years.

She has lived and worked in Europe, South East Asia and now mainland China. In Shanghai she founded independent contemporary dance SLATE, which she is the Artistic Director and Choreographer of.

SLATE is a multi-cultural group consisting of local and foreign dancers. The group performs regularly locally and outside of China, hosts collaborations and residencies between cities worldwide and offers workshops and education to the local community. 

Anneliese has created a number of grassroots initiatives including the independent and underground art space Basement 6 Collective, HOME arts space and the performance platform IN THE FLESH. Anneliese received an M.A. from Shanghai Theater Academy with a full scholarship. Her work has been shown at Shanghai International Dance Center Theater, Minsheng Art Museum, Pudong New Theater, 1933 Micro Theater, Hangzhou International Dance Festival, MOCA Shanghai, Himalaya Art Museum, Chronus Art Center, The Power Station of Art Theater, Spazio Diamenti (Rome), and more. 

She has taught and held workshops at Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai International Dance Center, Shanghai Vancouver Film School, SLATE movement workshops, Teatro Brannaccio (Rome), Matrice N (Alatri), The British International School Shanghai and many more. 

Anneliese continues to be an active member of the Shanghai Arts and Dance scene. 

TESTIMONY
<< Firstly, this project interested me because I have felt a deep change in myself since experiencing the pandemic. I live in China, and was here when it first began. The confusion and fear was crippling for the community. As a foreigner here, I witnessed the discrimination of the nation and culture from other countries at a time when people within China were going through a trauma. I watched as that all shifted, and internally local citizens became skeptical of the foreigners living on their land. Throughout the year I saw moments of pointing fingers, fear and self-preservation. I also witnessed acts of love and kindness amongst strangers, and communities surviving because of neighbors helping each other. As China began to heal, I saw the same exact scenarios play out word wide, each city having a repeat of what happened here, one after another. The same cycles of fear, blaming, caring and recovery. It was a rare moment in life when globally all humans were going through the same trauma at the same time. Perhaps it is a time to feel like one. When listening to the mantra and reacting, I was already at a point where I had faced the traumas caused by covid-19, recovered and have been changed. I viewed this experience with the Human Signs project as a reflection on what happened, rather than someone still caught up in the whirlwind. I connected to the guttural sounds of a human as a memory of my own screams during my worst times last year. Alone, fearful, living a life of endless repetition, watching everything crumble around me. More stable and recovered after the year, I could experience this primal scream of Yuval and look back. Content in my place, however, forever changed.>>

DANCE PARTICIPANTS