From a table on the second floor of the studio, Lin Hwai-min (
The gracefully aging choreographer greeted me wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers, barked a few orders and scribbled some notes during the rehearsal.
"They're doing good today," he says with a proud smile. It's hard to disagree.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLOUD GATE
There are plenty of beautiful dance performances to be seen in Taipei. What makes Dream so special is that there is nothing gratuitous about its beauty. And that's not a given for a two-hour-long interpretive dance based on a Chinese epic novel relying heavily on expensive sets and elaborate costumes.
Dream, like a lot of what Cloud Gate does, walks the fine line between boringly abstract and irritatingly pretty. The result is something that is both undeniably profound and instantly cool. Even the sexuality -- and there is sexuality -- is neither juvenile nor prudish. Not a lot of groups have the chops to pull this off, but at its worst Cloud Gate makes it look easy, and there are moments when it seems inevitable.
Lin insists -- and he's right -- that you don't need to know the story to appreciate the dance. "Dance is not there to tell any story," he said. "Dance is dance."
Still, Lin choreographed Dream in the first place because he was "crazy in love" with the novel, and his face lights up as he describes the story "about youth and youth lost."
The story is bookended by a red-robed monk reminiscing about his youth. The monk, as a young man living in a beautiful garden, falls in love with "the white lady." But he is forced to marry her rival, "the red lady," which drives his lover to her death and causes the man to leave the garden and become the monk.
Lin is unabashedly nostalgic about letting such a piece go. "It's really very beautiful," he remarks, a little sadly. But he insists that the performance in Shanghai later this year is "the absolute last -- finito."
"I'm being pulled into this hectic schedule," he says, and Dream is simply too complicated to keep in the repertoire. As to what he'll be doing instead, Lin says he may choreograph "something in Europe" soon, refusing to elaborate except to giggle and say, "It's wild."
Although tomorrow's performance will take place outdoors at the National Taiwan Concert Hall Plaza, 21-1, Zhongshan S Road (
The show starts at 7:30pm, but Lin says that if you want a front-row seat you need to be at least three hours early. As for the venue, it should be easy to find: Go to CKS Memorial Hall Station on the red line and follow the crowd.
As for Cloud Gate's next piece, Cursive III, which will debut later this year, it is in a style entirely different from Dream, but should be very cool. Lin says he's put off completing the trilogy to give his dancers time to mature, and now they're ready for a more frenetic piece. "We're working like crazy," he says. "It's really wild."
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50