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Last month, members attended the American Film Market convention in Santa Monica seeking worldwide distributors. Te buzz is that "My Dream" has the right stuf to earn an Academy Award.
"This flm deserves to be seen. It's beautiful," said Patrick de Bokay, director of the Miami International Film Festival. "Its message is that you are limited, but you are a human being. And you are an artist."
Liu is impatient. He wants to break international boundaries now.
In one set, Tai Lihua with hearing impairments, President of the troupe, leads 20 hearing-impaired dancers in ornate golden costumes in a routine known as 1,000 hands, in tribute to an eastern Bodhisattva. Seen head-on, the arms of the in-line performers move in elegant, breathtaking synchronicity. Te act has been posted on YouTube.
A Peking Opera act shows deaf dancers performing as blind singers mouth the words to the story.
At each performance, a hearing-impaired host uses sign language to express the troupe's theme -- that it does not take sight or hearing or full physical faculties to produce gorgeous art.
"Even a decaying tree provides shade. And a wilting fower sends forth fragrance," she says. "We are trying to hear sounds and rhythms in silence. To see light in darkness. To pursue perfection with disabilities."
Liu is weary of seeing disabled performers patronized as "special ambassadors" -- a diminished status he thinks belies their talents. He believes his troupe bests even China's top-rung performers. And in 2002, he took a huge gamble to prove it.They rejected traditional government funding in a move that not only gave them more creative freedom but also allowed them to charge for performances. Tey banked on the fact that the public would pay to see their troupe -- not as a mere curiosity and sympathy but for the art they created.
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