Anyone who knows Lin Hsiu-wei (林秀偉) would be impressed by her passion for dance and her fusion of eastern meditation and New-Age concepts.
Connecting body, mind and soul has been the focus of Tai-gu Tales Dance Theater (太古踏舞團) since 1988. War (巫的世界), however, will be a little bit different. The new dance, which will be performed at the Metropolitan Hall on Monday and Tuesday, will not only show the force of meditation, but it will also be very interactive by asking the audience to experience different rituals in the healing process.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF TAI-GU TALES DANCE THEATER
"I hope the dance can be a stress-easing trip for anyone who comes to this show. You won't just view or appreciate the dance," Lin said.
Tai-gu Tales has won international fame for performances such as The Life of Mandala (
Lin said a "mind-cleansing dance" did not mean that it was necessarily quiet and slow. On the contrary, she said, the dance would be quite noisy and colorful. It is divided into seven segments and will be performed in three different spaces: first at the central garden of the Metropolitan Hall, then on the stage inside the theater, and then back to the garden again for the closing segment.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF TAI-GU TALES DANCE THEATER
The show's Chinese title, which translates as "The World of Witches" may explain better what the dance looks like. For the first 30 minutes of the show, there will be a body-painting and meditation ritual taking place at the garden. "Meanwhile, we will lead the audience to do breathing movements, to soften everyone's body, as well their minds," Lin said.
Then the audience will be taken through a specially decorated tunnel to enter the theater. The stage and costume designer, Chang Wang (
In the ritual of praying for rain, dancer Ho Lien-hua (
The Flamenco dance represents the solitude and sorrow of wanderers. For Lin, it's also a metaphor of the contemporary human condition: Mother Earth finds the environment deteriorated daily from industrial expansion, while the tree of life finds it difficult to grow or reproduce.
Another highlight of the six rituals will be the love and sex ritual. Eight female dancers will shake their long hair to create a waving "sea of hair," while five male dancers will tumble acrobatically between the tides.
There will also be a solo dance by Lin's daughter, Wu Tsai-ling (
Wu recently won the teenage championship at the Taipei Modern Dance Competition.
"The [fairy] will experience death, being wrapped by gypsum and later all the other dancers will break the gypsum again for her resurrection," Lin said. "For me, all these rituals and ceremonies are ways to release negative energies from our minds and bodies."
In other words, Lin said the dance basically serves as a therapy, to release people's stress from work, modern technology, depression and insomnia.
"In the past few years, two incidents have proved that fear in life is a common issue for human hearts: Taiwan's 921 earthquake and the 911 incident. And how do human beings deal with the fear will be an important future topic for the whole world," Lin said.
"The earthquake showed hardworking Taiwanese people that there are things you can't control in your life."
This is why Lin decided to make Tai-gu Tales therapeutic in function.
In two months, Lin and her husband, Wu Hsing-kuo, will prepare another one-month tour performing The Life of Mandala in Canada.
War will be performed at 7:30pm on Monday and Tuesday. The Metropolitan Hall is located at 25 Bade Rd, Taipei (台北市八德路三段25號). Tickets cost between NT$300 and NT$1,200 and are available at the venue or through Acer ticketing.
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