Elizabeth Cameron Dalman became the pioneer of modern dance in Australia when she founded the Australian Dance Theater in 1965. It was the first modern dance group in her country and the first to be granted a government subsidy. For nearly forty years, Dalman has taught and collaborated with numerous dancers in various countries, including Taiwan.
One year after Grace Hsiao (
PHOTO: VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
In Crossing Tracks II -- A Meeting of Two Cultures (
Sun and Moon, the opening piece of the show, is adopted from an Australian aboriginal legend, which represents the sun as a woman and the moon as a man.
"In modern dance, female dancers' movements are usually more activated and male dancers' more smooth. It's just like the legend," Dalman said.
This piece will be performed in Taiwan for the second time. Dalman staged it in 1971 when she was touring in Taiwan. Her performance so inspired Tsai Ruei-yuei (
Prayer, created in 1972, will probably strike a chord with audiences today with its human-rights theme and anti-war message. Based on a true story that occurred during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the dance tells the tragic story of a Catholic girl who falls in a love with a Protestant soldier, then accidentally shoots him dead. Grace Hsiao's dancers act out the story with such precision and feeling that this piece is the highlight of the show.
The only shortcoming of this otherwise superb production is that Round-15 (
Crossing Tracks II -- A Meeting of Two Cultures will be performed at Round-15 Theater, 3F, 40-1 Chungshan N. Rd., Sec. 2, Taipei (
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and