Cunsong Xu
Artistic Director of GroundBreakers
Cunsong Xu is a choreographer and the artistic director of GroundBreakers, an Amsterdam-based contemporary dance organization creating intercultural performances, education and community projects.
Based in Amsterdam, he creates contemporary dance that brings Chinese movement principles into dialogue with Western modern dance and current social themes. His work explores identity, migration, memory, freedom and the relationship between body and culture.
Artistic Practice
Xu’s practice moves between contemporary dance, Chinese movement traditions, theatre, live music and socially engaged performance. Rather than treating cultural traditions as fixed forms, he uses the body as a place where different histories, philosophies and lived experiences can meet.
His choreographic research focuses on how memory and identity are carried physically: through breath, gesture, rhythm, tension and the relationship between performers. His work often develops through collaboration with artists, communities and people whose personal stories connect to wider questions of migration, freedom, belonging and cultural exchange.
Selected Works
Chinese Dinner
An interdisciplinary dance-theatre work set in and around a Chinese-Indonesian restaurant. Through contemporary dance, theatre and live music, the production explores identity, family, migration, food, cultural memory and belonging.
Opium Flower
An international contemporary dance production by GroundBreakers and Chang Dance Theatre, inspired by the lives of Asian migrant women in Amsterdam and exploring identity, memory, desire and resilience.
Anne’s Light
A modern dance work inspired by the diary of Anne Frank and stories of resistance during the Second World War, connecting remembrance with freedom, courage and humanity.
Freedom Is Not Free
A contemporary dance project developed around personal experiences of war and displacement, examining how conflict lives on in memory, breath and movement and how freedom becomes a fragile physical reality.
GroundBreakers
As artistic director, Cunsong Xu develops GroundBreakers’ artistic programme across performance, education and community participation. The organization works with artists, theatres, schools, funds and communities in the Netherlands and internationally.