Dancer Patricia Zhou on finding creative freedom and joining the Cats cast
The award-winning dancer, choreographer and filmmaker talks to Style about how she learned to embrace uncertainty and take ownership of her work
“If you’re not happy, you need to change that.”
I’m on the phone with award-winning dancer, choreographer and filmmaker Patricia Zhou, who candidly drops this bit of wisdom mid-conversation as only someone very assured of herself can. That wasn’t always the case.
“My sister’s friends [told me], ‘Only you can make a change in your life.’ I never knew that because I was so used to suffering through pain,” Zhou says.
Zhou was only about 25 at the time of her self-described “identity crisis”. Despite her young age, she had already endured a lifetime’s worth of training at some of the world’s most elite ballet academies and companies. These regimented environments demanded long, arduous practice to achieve perfection, leaving movement – beautiful as it was – to often revolve around muscle memory rather than freedom of expression. “I wasn’t excited about performance any more,” the dancer, now 32, recalls.
“Basically the reason is because my mom didn’t want me to dance,” she says and laughs. “She sent me to really strict ballet lessons at the Beijing Dance Academy hoping the teacher would be so mean to me I would hate dancing and never dance again. But weirdly it had the complete opposite effect. I used to be really lazy: suddenly, I was disciplined.”
“Younger me would feel a lot more apprehensive about not necessarily knowing exactly what I’m doing,” says Zhou, who has returned to the rigorous schedule of a large-scale production – eight shows a week for nine months straight – after years away from performing at that scale. “Obviously I still have a little fear because I want to know exactly what I’m going to do. But the older I get, I feel like there’s years of experience that allow you to [say], ‘I’m just going to trust myself.’ Also, realising that perfection isn’t necessarily exciting.”