Exploring emotional and behavioral deficits through the lens of dance: constructed from life interviews and observations of patients with negative symptoms of schizophrenia. / Xuan Ao (2024)

Fate Card: The Interweaving of Light And Shadow is a qualitative study that combines the themes of dance, visual arts and mental health to explore the inner world of people with schizophrenia, especially the emotional difficulties and social dysfunctions of patients with negative symptoms. This research is highly personal to me, and the project was inspired by my long-term observations and interviews with my grandmother and her partner, who suffers from schizophrenia, as well as my field research and interactions with patients at Chengdu Jinxin Psychiatric Hospital. Through a combination of personal experience and academic research, I hope to show the complexity of these patients’ emotional expression, social functioning and psychological state. With the wedding as the central backdrop, the work uses this symbolic scene to explore society’s prejudice against people with mental illness, especially the questioning of their eligibility to love and be loved. The stage design invites the audience to become ‘guests’ of the wedding through immersive theatre, blurring the boundaries between performance and reality and enhancing the audience’s sense of emotional involvement. Tarot cards are used as an auxiliary element to symbolise the patient’s confusion and helplessness towards the future. Through the interaction between the dancers and the tarot cards, it demonstrates the patient’s inner struggle in the face of social misunderstanding. 3 In terms of choreography, I combined the eight major effects of the Laban dance score with elements of ballet and jazz dance, to show through body language the obstacles of schizophrenic patients in emotional expression and social interaction. For the visual design and music, the work uses real live recordings from a psychiatric hospital in Chengdu and creates a dreamy wedding scene through light and shadow effects, as well as projecting images of my grandparents and playing the heartfelt messages they want to express to each other. This design further enhances the emotional tension of the work, blurring the line between reality and dream. ‘Cards of Destiny: Interweaving Light and Shadow’ is not only a visual and auditory feast, but also a sensual and emotional immersion experience. Through the form of art, the audience is able to gain a deeper understanding of mental health issues and feel the complex inner world of patients who are torn between reality and fantasy.