Deciphering Movements and Translating Differences – an interview with Jean Abreu and Naishi Wang

Blending movement, spoken word, and visual artistry, the thought-provoking duet Deciphers will arrive at The Coronet Theatre, inviting audiences into a world where translation is physical, emotional, and deeply personal. Created and performed by acclaimed dance artists Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu, Deciphers explores the shifting meanings of identity, translation, and migration in their lived experiences: China to Canada for Naishi, Brazil to the UK for Jean. In this interview, the artists reflect on their collaborative process, navigating the challenges and revelations of cross-cultural exchange, and discuss how language, difference, and belonging shape their creative practice.

Image: Deciphers | Photographer: Maya Yoncali

Deciphers uses the tagline "loss and gain in translation”. What is lost, and what is gained here? How do you both, as immigrant artists, personally experience this tension, and how does it impact your artistic practice?

Jean: I'm in a theatre right now, a big event is happening here, so if you hear noise, I apologize. In a way, I'm already translating this space. When we first met, it was the commonality of our backgrounds that we deeply considered. We both came from different parts of the world to new countries, to form our languages, to study and deepen our understanding. Translation quickly became something incredibly important for both of us.

On a personal level, translation in my work has become central; it has allowed me to think of existence in a more embodied way. Words became less important because, by acquiring a second language and trying to fit into this new space, I found myself focusing not only on cultural shock but also on communicating through the body. When I first moved to the UK, my English was minimal, so my experience of the world was often sonic and physical as I had to read body language. Even when I attended ballet classes for the first time after moving to the UK, it’s so different from the traditional Brazilian ballroom dance I used to do; the unfamiliar environment made me feel a sense of loss, but it also offered a new kind of understanding. In my practice, words became less relevant, not that they're unimportant, but connecting with what really matters became more about embodiment. I want to feel and experience things deeply; the body's knowledge matters to me. Form itself became less important; the process is ongoing. When Naishi and I joined forces, it was a fantastic opportunity to have an honest, direct dialogue. Our process emerged from these two paths. Naishi: We each have our own answers, even when we work together. This project is a blend of our collective experiences: China to Canada for me, Brazil to the UK for Jean. We're not asking for a shared experience or understanding, but rather, how do we relate? How do we recognize struggles, misunderstandings, and moments of comprehension that parallel each other? Adapting and fitting in are central. When I moved to Canada at 16 in 2004, I barely spoke any English. I dedicated myself to moving and sensing with my body. Here, "familiar" began to mean something new—the body quickly translates new concepts. Fitting in is not absolute, but it's a process. My dance training in China during the late 90s taught hard work as the baseline, but in Canada that value wasn't seen the same way. Sometimes, working hard was even discouraged. These differences forced me to adapt, to re-examine what discipline and effort mean in a new culture. This tension of what is lost, gained, or changed shapes my life and practice as an immigrant artist. Deciphers comes directly from these life experiences, becoming a consistent act of translation—not just language, but also value, aesthetics, and ways of being. One important thing: I have now lived in Canada for longer than I lived in China, so "backward translation" is significant to me. For example, when I return to my hometown, Changchun, it has changed so much that I can hardly recognize it. The city evokes childhood memories, yet it feels strange.

That sounds like another kind of cultural shock: going home after so many years in a new place. It isn't easy. I really appreciate how your experiences inform your creative process. It seems that cultural misunderstanding, rather than being just an obstacle, becomes a catalyst for creativity.

Jean: Yes. As with Naishi, my time in the UK has become longer than my time in Brazil. There is rejection but also acceptance, and all these feelings that don't fit neatly into either place. What we learn is to accept the impermanence of the immigrant experience. It's constantly evolving and never truly settled. Through our work together, we're trying to amplify this: not only as immigrant experiences but also as a human experience. What does it mean to be transient? We're here for a time, not knowing the endpoint. Fitting in pushes us into unfamiliar spaces and challenges us to discover. This process is about sitting with our own translations honestly and openly; it’s a provocation for discovery rather than forcing a kind of shared understanding. 

When you talk about amplifying the human experience, I understand it as creating a shared point, perhaps using the theatre as a setting, so that even people who haven’t migrated can understand something bigger. Is that right?

Jean: Yea, I suppose even when we speak the same language, communicating with someone is a kind of translation. For instance, you translate yourself from being a friend to being a parent, or from one role to another. These acts aren't so different from a huge culture shock; we’re always trying to connect, understand, or even misunderstand, which is human. The immigrant experience is perhaps an intense example of this, because everything must be unpacked and deconstructed. Entering a ballet class, for example, was a shock; there’s a new kind of order to understand. Do I keep my past, or does it change? These are ongoing questions. Ultimately, Deciphers is about struggling with this translation between us, not about teaching people "what being an immigrant is”, but reflecting the broader human effort to connect.

Naishi: Jean has said most of it. I want to add: no matter where we come from, there are always differences, even within our country or families. Sometimes we disagree but keep going. When making a big move, like immigration, you can't really "go back” as things have changed. Deciphers isn't about teaching the audience, "here are the differences," or showing a Chinese or Brazilian way. It's abstract like poetry; some people might feel strongly about one line, others not. Our work doesn't belong entirely to us; observers/audiences "decipher" it for themselves.

Jean: Yes, and in that way, the work becomes a conversation, open for completion by the audience. Our role is to trigger spaces for feeling, using poetic language to evoke emotions that rise and dissipate.

Naishi: Also, we want to amplify differences and choices, not erase them. I love human flaws and imperfections. It's about how we keep going even carrying our regrets.

Jean: It's about reconciling differences but not a forced commonality. In Deciphers, we share the journey without feeling isolated, but we don't have to walk the same path.

It seems you're starting a conversation, not making a statement; the audience fills in the gaps. Your artistic backgrounds are also very different — Brazilian rhythms, Chinese folk movement, contemporary dance, ink on paper, spoken word. How did you begin to fuse these elements and create a starting point?

Naishi: Deciphers began when our common friend Guy Cools, who is also a dramaturg on the project, introduced us. That gave us common ground. The main structure is grounded in contemporary performance. Neither of us wanted to tell a traditional story; our backgrounds and experiences contribute to a shared aesthetic through a bodily translation instead.

Our artistic language fuses Chinese folk dance, Brazilian movement, and contemporary forms: these are not just abstract influences but ways our bodies move. Both of us share histories of immigration during the late 1990s and early 2000s, before smartphones or instant translators. We carried paper dictionaries and navigated differences through movement and gesture, reading expressions and context. The fusion of artistic language is a way to decipher each other and find connection across cultures.

Jean: Another element is that this collaboration is long-term. We started in 2019, before the pandemic. Suddenly, we had to connect online instead of in person, so we communicated through virtual means and discovered our shared journey in new ways. Some moments come from childhood memories, some from different triggers in each other's lives. Over time, we created a code between us, deciphering where our movements come from or where they end —Chinese tradition, contemporary moves, all blended together. For immigrants, these distinctions dissolve; the movements exist together, formed by our experiences.

It is interesting that your early experiences in a new country were so physical: carrying a dictionary, bodily feeling your way. Then, when the pandemic came, your collaboration became virtual, less embodied. Did you talk more than move at the start?

Naishi: At first, we needed to get to know each other as people before deciding to make a piece. We were Facebook friends before ever meeting. Our communal friend, dramaturg Guy Cools introduced us, but we were already following each other's work. We didn't talk much at first but, eventually, the need to understand each other led to conversations about backgrounds, personalities, favorite foods, and so on. Only after that did we begin to think about collaborating. Then the pandemic forced us to spend even more time in conversation before we could meet in person.

Jean: In 2021, I traveled to Canada in winter. We didn't know when we'd finally be able to share a studio in the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, but when we did, we encountered all the barriers and anxieties of the time. It was my first time experiencing minus 17 degrees: a shock for me.

Naishi: Jean, that was December, not even January.

Jean:I know, I was told we could hardly go outside; the blizzard would freeze you. It was another shock.

Naishi: That was also the moment I realized Jean’s body was made for a tropical climate, not for northern storms. Jean: I know cold from the UK, but Canada is another level. I had to adapt and figure out what this meant.

Naishi: Also, when we met, I expected Jean to be "really Brazilian”, but he said, "I need my tea with milk"  and I thought, “Interesting"!

Jean: He was looking for the Brazilian inside me, but sometimes even I can't find it. It's there somewhere.

What a lovely story on how the culture changes you, even your routine, down to what drink you prefer. When you meet in this new context, all these sensory differences become part of the practice. Jean, you had to adapt to the climate in Canada, while Naishi was already used to it. Do you think these sensorial differences influenced the work?

Jean: Deciphers is about that shock, discomfort, and finding emotional, embodied answers. Later, we realized it wasn’t about finding commonality but about sitting in those unfamiliar spaces, slowing down, and letting the body speak.

Naishi: For me, the pandemic, like immigration, meant everything felt uncertain, with no solid landing. Our journey as immigrant dance students was similar — visas, from student to worker to permanent resident to citizen. It's a long process with no clear landing point. As art students, there weren't many role models; not many immigrant students became practising artists.

Image: Deciphers | Photographer: Maya Yoncali

Did learning each other's movement vocabularies alter how you feel in your own body? Jean: It’s ongoing. From the beginning, we were interested in each other's art, but I can't remember who first initiated. The relationship is not predictable; we're often responding to each other's energy, working kinesthetically. We're not trying to copy each other's movement but engaging sensorially with what emerges.

Naishi: There's always attraction at first, like dating: first attracted, then copying, then independence. Life and art are never settled; the work grows as we do. We discover new habits, interests, and ways of moving. That's what makes the work alive — it evolves. We continue negotiating, fitting in, deciphering each other.

Jean: Now, Naishi is performing in the UK for the first time, and I've performed in Canada, completely different experiences. Each place, each audience, adds something new. We don’t want answers to be predetermined; we want to remain open and faithful to live translation.

Does the audience impact your experience each time you perform?

Naishi: Of course, we consider the audience, but we're not interested in telling a literal story. Maybe there isn't even a story, just emotions we want to highlight. The art lives through performance; people might love or hate it, and that's fine. If the audience enjoys it, great, but we accept all responses.

Jean: Our work is an invitation. It's not trying to be liked or disliked, but simply to invite others to feel with us.

Naishi: As immigrants, we've experienced begging, adjustment, and hard work, with tears and blood. In performance, we keep our heads up and let the audience decipher us, rather than begging for their understanding.

Your journey as immigrants shall be relatable to many others, including myself. It’s comforting to know that there isn’t always a clear landing point — we just keep evolving, as in life. It's an emotional journey, and it’s significant even if the audience only connects with one emotion from a single scene.

Naishi: Emotions are central to me, even though Jean and I have our differences. As Asian immigrants, we work hard, but if you don’t say it, nobody knows. We suffer in silence, hold our feelings in. In Chinese, we call it "YanShi” (厭世), which means “I hate everything”. However,  Jean is different: someone gives him a hard time, he turns it around and moves on.

Jean: Yes, emotion is central. Poetic language gives us space to trigger emotion rather than define it. As an immigrant, the question of "home" is eternal — I've now lived longer in the UK than Brazil. The idea of being dislocated, of "locationlessness," is ongoing. You keep moving forward, never truly settled, and that struggle to me has an enormous emotional outpour in itself. Even simple acts, like having coffee with my mother at home, evoke a huge sense of emotion and strangeness. In the UK, people say my English is amazing, but still I can’t quite understand something. That lingering foreignness haunts the experience, but it can be a source of power too.

Sometimes, that haunting sense of foreignness can be constructive, even powerful, for your creative practice — at least, it makes me emotional listening to you. Your performance addresses immigration in subtle and direct ways. What role do you think dance and movement can play in reframing the global conversation on migration and belonging?

Jean: We each arrived in each other’s lives at a particular moment, and I get emotional thinking about it. The choice to immigrate is never easy; immigrants have a multitude of reasons for making this decision. Working on Deciphers, we're also answering questions for ourselves together, but not in the same way. There isn't a simple answer. To me, the goal isn't necessarily to shape the global conversation, but to present our experiences as they are: complex and never fully reversible. The immigrant condition, the first generation, the twentieth generation, never reverses. For Deciphers, it’s about expressing the “never returning” that ongoing practice of movement and adaptation.

Naishi: I don’t have the answer, but the global situation around migration and diaspora is very complicated. Whether in Japan, Hong Kong, the UK, North America, or Europe, the issues are similar. But I believe in art particularly dance, as a space to embody complexity instead of simplifying it. Through movement, we can hold contradiction and nuance; art can do what politics can’t. Hopefully, art can transform the meaning of "immigrant" into something positive and deeply human.

Technology now offers new answers, like AI-generated images, writing, and concepts, but I prefer things that are hard-earned, that become a bodily memory through repetition. The strongest expressions of humanity are those machines can't replicate: our flaws, regrets, mistakes. Artistic practice gives focus. Perhaps, instead of answers, we simply need to focus on one thing and do it well.

Will you both do completely different work in the future, or is Deciphers part of a lifelong accumulation of experience?

Naishi: Between us, we both have individual works. Deciphers succeeded because of our parallel immigrant understandings. Who knows what the future holds—maybe we’ll find new shared interests, and I’m open to that. But for now, I focus on doing my best with what's in front of me rather than planning for five or ten years ahead.

Jean: There's no way to preempt what comes next. Each of us puts our effort into being as faithful and honest as possible, hence Deciphers, with the body as the main conduit for emotion and ideas. Our ongoing conversation is part of our growth as friends, collaborators, and visionaries that we support either individually in our own practice. Soon we're touring the UK—London, Newcastle, Birmingham, Brighton—to connect with many communities. We're focusing on bringing ourselves fully to this moment with our bodies.

Naishi: But it’s important to mention the difficulty of producing work as independent immigrant artists. The landscape for funding independent art, in Canada at least, is very disappointing. I don't know about the landscape in the UK. Jean:It's toxic, terrible.

Naishi: It's never simple to say, "We want to produce new work"; the granting system is unreliable. I now ask myself: how to continue when the system always lets us down?

Jean:Immigrant artists always need to find new ways, redesigning ourselves constantly. Add the extra layer of being a person of color, and there’s even more nuance to navigate. It’s not getting easier, but Deciphers is a celebration: we made it happen and it's here.

Naishi: We’re not comfortable begging, whether to councils, juries, audiences, even our own communities or families. Deciphers isn’t about stereotypes, and intentionally or not, maybe it breaks some. If people agree, that’s a bonus; if not, that's fine. The work gets criticism, applause, and everything in between. That’s the artist’s job in the 21st century. We can’t control other people’s expectations, audiences fill in the picture themselves.

Does Deciphers break any stereotypes, whether intentionally or unintentionally?

Jean: On a personal level, the stereotypes people project onto me often reveal more about them than about me. Deciphers isn’t about shaping or debunking anyone's expectations. We invite people to come as they are — even with their own stereotypes. It's not for us to control.

Dance and movement can truly transform, not because of spectacle but because of their essence. Dance exists in many forms — writing, drawing, and moving. Unfortunately, the world still often sees dance as just high kicks and spectacle, but it’s much more. Embodiment allows us to process and understand our experiences as humans. Technology may take us further away from this, but we need to keep questioning: what does dance truly give us?

Naishi: I honestly don’t think in terms of stereotypes. Sometimes people have images or preconceptions — like that Chinese in London are all wealthy. But there’s not just one type, and that goes for art too. Deciphers touches on bodily translation. That’s why we didn’t want AI to "translate" for us. We want to work in real time, with enough time to sense the body’s wisdom. The body knows its way — when something’s wrong, it sends signals.

What do we want to build in today’s complexity? Our practice is about integrating our life experiences as immigrants into our work, not about fitting genres or categories.

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Deciphers will be staged at The Coronet Theatre on 23-25 October 2025, 19:30.