Hopeless romantics will definitely fall for Kaohsiung City Ballet's production of one of the most important European Romantic ballets, August Bournonville's La Sylphide. You can catch it this weekend in Kaohsiung or next weekend in Taipei.
The original La Sylphide was choreographed by Italian Filippo Taglioni and was first performed in 1832 at the Paris Opera. The Kaohsiung City Ballet KCB will be reproducing the groundbreaking 1836 version of the ballet by Danish choreographer August Bournonville, for the Royal Danish Ballet.
Bournonville is the one of the most important figures of Danish romanticism and his personality and life were suitably dramatic. He was born in Copenhagen in 1805 (the 200th anniversary of his birth was on Aug. 21) as the illegitimate son of the French dancer Antoine Bournonville and his Swedish-born housekeeper, Lovisa Sundberg (they were married when he was 11).
PHOTOS COURTESY OFKAOHSIUNG CITY BALLET
As a boy, his physical development was slow, thus he was often recruited to dance a child's role in ballets well into his teens. He studied ballet in France, where he had an illegitimate daughter with his lover, after which he returned to Copenhagen, married his Swedish-born wife and accepted an appointment as the principal dancer and artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet. For obvious reasons, his illegitimate daughter remained a secret.
For the almost 50 years that Bournonville led the Royal Danish Ballet, he ruled with a strict hand and a passionate enthusiasm. His passion was matched by his brilliance, however, and Danish ballet reached a golden age under his rule.
"We've always known that [La Sylphide] was very important in the history of ballet, especially since it was the first time a ballerina wore hard-toes, which are widely used these days. That's why we wanted to perform [the ballet]," KCB founder and artistic director Chang Hsiu-Ru (張秀如) said. Marie Taglioni, Filippo's daughter, is said to have been the first to dance with pointe shoes in La Sylphide's 1832 performance.
La Sylphide tells the story of a Scotsman, James, who is tempted by a sylph -- an immortal yet soulless (elemental) being that inhabits the air ? -- even as he is marry his betrothed. Soon his dignified yet ordinary life turns to tragedy.
Among Taiwan's ballet troupes, the KCB stands out as a champion for the purists. Established in 1992, the troupe started off performing selections of classic ballets and later began to choreograph their own ballets based on traditional Chinese stories such as Na-Cha Causing Disturbance with the Sea (哪吒鬧海), Butterfly Lovers (梁祝), and a Chinese Romeo and Juliet. The troupe performed a ballet based on Eileen Chang's (張愛玲) Love in Cities (傾城之愛) this July for the 2005 World Games in Duisburg, Germany.
KCB's first encounter with La Sylphide was in 2001 when it performed the second act. This time around, Chang has invited French dancer/choreographer Jean Paul Comelin, who has worked with the top ballet groups and dancers in the world, to help with the production. Also helping out are Taiwan's Tseng Chung-lin (
Next Sunday's Taipei performance will feature Vietnamese ballerina Cao Chi Thanh, who recently won the Fifth Helsinki International Ballet Competition held in Finland in May and June.
Performance notes:
What: Kaohsiung City Ballet's production of La Sylphide
When: Tomorrow at 7:30pm in Kaohsiung, Sept. 3 at 7:30pm and Sept. 4 at 2:30pm in Taipei
Where: In Kaohsiung at the Gangshan Cultural Center, 42 Gangshan Rd, Gangshan, Kaohsiung County (
Tickets: NT$800 to NT$200 available through Artsticket outlets: Kaohsiung, (07) 226 5998, Taipei, (02) 3393 9888, or www.artsticket.com.tw
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and