(In Development)

Tender Factory is Living Echo’s first full-length project. It blends contemporary dance with carefully crafted animation to explore how tenderness can be shaped, presented, misunderstood, or consumed. The work creates a world that appears soft on the surface while harboring greater complexity beneath. Instead of offering a direct narrative, it uses atmosphere and subtle shifts in tone to invite the audience to sense how tenderness can change, open, and take on new meaning over time.

At the heart of the piece is a quiet but urgent question about the nature of tenderness itself. As Artistic Director, Luna Zhuo reflects: “I want to ask what happens when something that looks tender is actually designed and selected. Do we still believe it is real love? And what if the love we think is wholehearted is actually built on unseen cruelty? Especially when the ‘perfect’ beings we adore are themselves shaped by a system that harms them.”

Tender Factory moves through these ideas not by telling a story, but by revealing a world where beauty becomes too polished, gestures repeat, and the surface grows increasingly fragile. Through the interplay of movement and animation, the work traces the delicate line between genuine emotion and the curated versions of softness we learn to admire. As the piece unfolds, tenderness begins to shift—sometimes opening, sometimes distorting—until the audience is invited to sense what lies beneath, and to consider how easily the systems around us can shape care.