Opus One (2020)

In Opus One, Hao Jingban employs a dual-channel video to connect two historical moments through music. As a young Chinese couple in bustling 21st-century Beijing browse TikTok for swing dances, they find themselves caught up in the craze that swept through the African American community in Harlem in the 1930s and gave rise to the Lindy Hop, a development of the Charleston. Their process of studying the dancers’ movements while exploring the icons, legends and dance halls of the era takes them far beyond the simple aim of learning to dance, and they end up forging a dialogue between two different moments in history united by a shared need for bodily expression and popular creation and an avid passion for music.