From the heart of the Gobi desert, the Gansu Dunhuang Art Theater brings a classic of Chinese ballet, Flower Rain on the Silk Road, to Taiwan for a week-long tour of the island.
The tour began last night at Taipei's Sun Yat-sen Memorial Center and will play again tonight in Banqiao.
Dunhuang lies at a crucial junction on the Silk Road, the ancient tangle of trails that stretch more than 7,000km from China to the Mediterranean and served as a highway for trading merchandise and mixing cultures: Chinese, Indian, Islam and Greek. By the 4th century , the road had made Dunhuang prosperous. It also made it an important stop for Buddhists and a destination for thousands of Buddhist monks from India.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ARS FORMOSA
Today, the best-known representatives of that time are the Mogao Caves, hundreds of shrines cut into a long cliff face some 25km outside the city. Monks began carving the caves in 366 AD and, in each of them, made intricate drawings and clay stuccoes of the Buddha as well as murals depicting the lives and cultures of the people who came to Dunhuang.
The site began to decline in the 12th century and slipped into obscurity until the 20th century. Of the thousands of caves carved by monks, nearly 500 remain.
The world-famous murals are the inspiration for Dunhuang Charm, with scenes from the cave walls coming to life on stage. The scenery and costumes, too, reflect the rich design and vibrant colors found in the Mogao Caves.
Flower Rain on the Silk Road was first performed in 1979 and has since become one of the most-staged ballets in the world. In 1982, the Gansu Dunhuang Art Theater had the honor of performing the ballet in Italy, a stage that helped launch the ballet's popularity around the globe. It's now been staged thousands of times both in and outside of China.
Songs like The Iraqi State (
Performance notes:
What: Dunhuang Charm, Flower Rain on the Silk Road
Time and place:
March 25: Taipei County Government Multi-purpose Hall, 3F, 161 Zhongshan Rd., Sec. 1, Banqiao, Taipei County (板橋市中山路一段161號3F).
March 26: Changhua County Yunlin Performing Arts Center.
March 27: Tainan City Cultural Center.
March 28: Tainan County Cultural Center.
March 29: Chiayi City Cultural Center Performing Arts Auditorium.
March 30: Kaohsiung City CKS Cultural Center Auditorium.
March 31: Taichung City Chungshan Hall.
Tickets: Cost from NT$300 to NT$1,200, depending on location. Contact Ars Formosa at (02) 2771 5676 or visit Web site at www.arsformosa.com.tw.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would