Mando Canto Disco: A Dance Party Presented by Notorious Beijing Photographer Ren Hang

Step back in time with this endearingly awesome party titled Dancing in the Spring Breeze, brought to you by art photographer Ren Hang. Set for April 22 at ModernSky Lab, three DJs will turn back the clock to the 70s and 80s, a time when pop music, especially of the disco variety, truly began to flourish in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

DJs Pei, Meng Meng, and the Count of Monte Disco will be blasting 80s hits from artists like Leslie Cheung, Sandy Lam, and Teresa Teng. These legends of Chinese language songcraft were the voice of a generation, taking sounds that were blowing up in Western pop music and throwing them into a cultural wok to make some unique and flavorful Chinese dance songs.

Many of you might only associate Cantopop with dudes in high-waisted jeans belting out sad ballads, often on a sandy beach. Well, they're part of it, but there’s also super fun stuff that could have only come from this special time and place when both cinema and music collided to create a celebrity-fueled pocket of output filled with blackmail, infidelity, and a whole bunch of celebrity abductions. Do yourself a favor and don’t just write off these songs as cheesy (which they almost certainly are) because we all know that cheese tastes great in small, or sometimes large doses.

So come on down to embrace this important era of Chinese pop music and dance the night away with the glitz and glamor of this one-of-a-kind event. Also at the party Ren Hang will be busy snapping pics of all the smartly dressed in attendance for a new art book he is planning. Dress code: anything that would look appropriate in an early John Woo or Kar-Wai Wong movie or, knowing Ren Hang, clothing is entirely optional.

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Email: danielkippwhittaker@thebeijinger.com

Photos: Jung San Hyuk, South China Morning Post, courtesy of the organizer