He realised “Living Dance”, a series of his early works, and later an album under the same title was published by, the French publisher Seguier. In 2011, Yang started fashion photography and has since collaborated with major magazines such as GQ, Vogue and ElleMen in China.
I was trained as a dancer in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Academy of Arts for 5 years when I was 12yo , and served as the leader dancer in the Army for another 5 years . After I left the army , I worked as a dancer partner with one of the most famous contemporary dancers JinXing until I came to France in 2001 to dance at the Ballet Du Nord. In 2002, I started work in the famous French ballet company Ballet Preljocaj until 2015. I have danced in the most prestigious theatres and dancer festivals around the world, like BAM and Lincoln Center in the USA. I started photography with my colleagues in 2008. In 2009, I started my “Living Dance” project with all the dancers in the company. I had several exhibitions of it in many big theatres and a book published in 2011.
I have been trained and worked as a dancer for almost 30 years since I was 12 years old, so movement is in my blood. I am better at expressing through my body language than words. Dance is part of me.
You work on your body from the day you started to dance until the day you die. We have to learn how our muscles control our bodies to move, to speak. This body, when we let it speak, is full of a profound energy, beyond races or physical borders. For me, the human body is the most beautiful thing on earth and each body is unique. Each muscle just like each movement performed is unique. That’s the reason why my work is all nude, because I want to show the beauty of each muscle and each person. I don’t want to cover it !
I believe in body positivity. I do work out everyday, whether I accept myself or not, is to stay healthy! After what we have been in 2020, we all understand how a healthy life, body is important to us. Sitting at home, eating , watching TV is not healthy, is not about accepting yourself, I believe a lot of people are not about accepting themselves. Doing sports, moving my body become drugs for me, if I don’t sweat, if I don’t go to gym, I will feel my body like the kneaded paper, only after I finish exercising, I feel like a flat paper, very light, and ready to start painting on it!
As a dancer, I know exactly what I want. I give the dancers the directions of what I want easily. We can understand each other much better than with other photographers, I guess. And I am looking for something different from other photographer’s works also. I am more looking for energy. Sometimes, I don’t want a perfect jump, or positions. I am interested to see what the dancer can create through different movements from point A to point B. When we are working, I always ask the dancer to improvise from the directions I gave them. I will see what they can give me, then I will ask them to redo the movement I liked by photographing them from the right angles.
They are all special to me, they are all my babies even though they are all taken with dancers, always nude and even sometimes with the same dancer. But each experience is different, the process of creation is unique, which makes each picture so special.
Mapplethorpe, Peter Lindberg, Ruven Afanador.
I want to work with Sylvie Guillem. Not only because she is the one with the physical ability to do it best and to do it most impressively either classic or contemporary and to make the audience watch . Not only because she was Greatest ballerina and dancer of our time, she is undoubtedly one of the greatest dancers of her generation. Also because we have some very similar ways. We both know the freedom is very important in our career, knew that time was passing fast, we both didn’t want to live the life of others, the decision of others, wanted to take responsibility for the actions of ourselves .She left Paris Opera , I left army , which so many people want to be part of it, but we both left security behind, to find our dreams, to keep our life in our own hands! All this made me really wanna to meet her, to photograph her, to work with her.
He was so nice. Even if he had been photographed so many times with the most famous photographers, he was so down to earth, so nice, and so helpful. He was a great man, a real artist.
Muralla Roja, the architect Ricardo Bofill.
I have always loved Architecture, I think they have given me a lot of inspiration , the forms. When I saw the images of Muralla Roja for the first time, I was amazed immediately by the colors, and the way how Ricardo Bofill created and separated the space. And it has become the destination of my project since . After Covid blocked the world for two years, I finally got the chance to go there with one dancer to make my dream come true . But it was like everything else, meaning nothing came easily. We have been talking and imagined what and where we can shoot, and how the movement should be like. But nothing is like what we thought once we got there. First , there is not enough space for the dancer to move around or dance like I always ask them to. The corridor is too narrow, the stairs are intricately intertwined, which is something I have never seen before. I start asking the dancer to dance, move as much as he can to be closer to what I was asked him to do. And at the same time, I am trying to imagine and to play with space , to make gravitational illusions. Here we are, my new work “Inception“.
I rented an apartment in the Muralla Roja for a week. The first 2,3 days we will study the location, space, and sunlight of course. And we were also doing some fashion shoots there for Arabian Mode fashion magazine, which allow us to take time to be at the place at the right time, to make it fast because after all, there are still people living inside, we don’t wanna become the center of attention.
I have a place to access the USA by car to visit the beautiful places on my list, and to make some self portraits. That’s why I am working hard to get back into shape, when the timing is right, I will be on my roads!
