Tankman Tango in Sydney

It’s hard to believe that the image of tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square, and of the attack on thousands of Chinese citizens by the Chinese army, are images easily forgot. But extreme censorship in China enforces a policy of historic erasure, ensuring that for many Chinese the incident simply didn’t happen. For us in the west, I suppose it’s a matter of ‘forgetting’ past and ongoing human rights abuses as our economies have swelled from the exponential economic progress of China.


Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, marked in locations around the world with the public art event, dancing the Tankman Tango. The work by Deborah Kelly, referred to also as forget 2 forget, takes one of the most pervasive images of the 1989 protests, a lone, anonymous man and his shopping bags standing in the way of a column of tanks, and creates a mass dance, a real “social movement” Kelly puns in a Sydney Morning Herald article here. The dance, choreographed by Jane McKernan to resemble to the original tankman’s “dance” was performed by groups in Perth, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Auckland Singapore, Belgrade, Brussels, Paris and probably more, anyone could organise a group and learn the dance on youtube, (performed by Tiek Kim Pok)



Between 5pm and 7.30 last night, Georgie and I were among the masses (70 or so) doing the tango on the Sydney Opera House forecourt. During the hour and a half of repetition of the basic steps, people would occasionally join or leave the group. I popped out of for a short time for a bit of a rest, but also to witness the dance. It was quite spectacular with the moving spotlights lighting up the drizzly wet air, steely stares from dancers, and the unison flinging of plastic bags. The participants solemnly leaving between the repetitions could have been a symbolic gesture towards dissenters silenced or fallen, while others always returned to fill the ranks. I’ll upload some pictures when I hunt some down.

Sydney Opera House

While watching I also noticed how ugly those lights on the Opera House are, installed as part of Luminous as part of ‘Vivid Sydney’. It looks like a Ken Done tea towel. Call me a sour grape, just don’t remind me how much this vacuous display of technical virtuosity cost in taxpayer money.

Ken Done.