After gaining acclaim in the fields of fashion and nude photography, Australian photographer James Houston turned to observing dance. As a great piece of choreography does not necessarily make a great photograph, Houston invited members of three of Australia's leading dance companies -- the Australian Ballet, the Sydney Dance Company and the Bangarra Dance Theatre -- to his studio "to direct my own ideas rather than just shoot predictable `dance shots' that have been used to capture dancers for years."
The results of exposing 600 rolls of black-and-white film over five days are displayed in the Rawmoves exhibition at Cherng Pin Gallery on Tunhua South Rd., as well as an NT$1,750 book with the same title.
As Houston is mainly known as a body and nude photographer -- culminating in an earlier book, Raw, and the official calendar for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games -- it should come as no surprise that he focuses mainly on the dancers' forms.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY OFFICE
"I didn't want it to be just about dance. I wanted it to be different. I wanted ... to create images and compositions that captured emotion and form," Houston says in his Rawmoves book.
It is debatable, however, how much of a dancer's emotion a photographer can capture when directing the subject in a studio for one or two days, especially when one lacks a background in choreography (Houston studied ceramic, sculpture and design and took up photography as a hobby 10 years ago).
In the roughly 40 prints that are exhibited, Houston shows excellence in technique as well as in capturing dancers when airborne. Most of the group compositions, however, show a lack of choreography, with limbs interlocking to little effect.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY OFFICE
In the series on the Australian Ballet, placing less importance on the human form and more on costumes might have improved the works, as well as providing more of a variety to Rawmoves.
Despite this, Rawmoves provides an interesting, if highly personal, snapshot of the contemporary dance scene in Australia, which is enhanced by videos of performances by the three groups that are shown in the gallery throughout the day.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not