"In today's society, we're all second-hand goods in love's flea markets. No one is new and pure anymore, but we make do with whatever broken pieces that we find," said Hsiao Wo-ting (蕭渥廷), the main choreographer of Hsiao Jing-wen Dance Group (蕭靜文舞蹈團), explaining the idea behind the group's new work Three Sorts of Flea Markets for Sweet Sense Organs (甜蜜感官的三種跳蚤市場).
Established in 1985, the group has been putting on very socially conscious performances, taking on topics ranging from teenage prostitution to capital punishment, Taiwan's election culture and the building of nuclear power plants and the demolition of the 44 South Village in Taipei.
Their new piece, set to go on stage tonight, unexpectedly deals with a softer, and more universal topic - love - from a woman's perspective. Hsiao ascribes her inspiration to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which, she said, revealed to her a mirror image of herself. Reading the book prompted her to present the different attitudes toward love and relationships between the two sexes.
One episode has a group dance showing teenage girl's naively enthusiastic and often irrational attitude toward love. Their blind passion drives them to despair when their expectations of a fairy-tale love clash with real life. "When they are young, they plunge into love, only to get hurt. But when they've learned about reality, something's lost," Hsiao said.
Through dealing with a common subject, the precision and creativity of Hsiao's choreography makes the dance both emotionally touching and visually stunning.
Three Sorts of Flea Markets for Sweet Sense Organs will be performed at Washang Art District tonight at 7:30pm. Tomorrow at 2:30pm and 7:30pm, and Sunday at 2:30pm. Tickets are available for NT$350 through Acer ticketing outlets. The show is for adult audiences only. ID cards are required for admission.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby