Four years after choreographer Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) transfixed audiences with his meditation on the ancient art of calligraphy in Cursive, the Cloud Gate Dance Theater is ready to take its fans into the spiritual heart of calligraphy again with tomorrow night's world premier of Cursive III, the final chapter in Lin's trilogy.
Cursive III is based on kuang cao (
"The best metaphor for wild cursive [calligraphy] is the dance of ink on white paper," Lin said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
"The whole idea [of Cursive III] is about nature," he said.
When we think of calligraphy, he said, we think of nature's calligraphy, of water tracings.
Martial arts
"Traces of rain water on walls. If there is a gap in the roof, traces of water will eventually come in and leave their mark," he said. "When we talk about calligraphy in Chinese, we know there are certain rules you have to observe. When you train dancers in taichi, martial arts ... there are certain parts of the body that you have to observe," he said.
"But in wild calligraphy you break the rules, you let it go," he said. "When the brush is full of water you just let it go, you feel from the gut. When the brush is dry you have to have more control ... In terms of choreography, you let it go and then come back. In and out rules," he said.
Lin began work on Cursive III by having his 24 dancers improvise. For five weeks, he just sat back and watched. He said he didn't care what they did as long they did it with power.
The choreography and movements in Cursive III are different from the first two pieces, Lin said. Cursive was very fast, with lots of martial arts kicks. Cursive II was more measured, with a lot of slower movements.
What: The Cloud Gate Dance Theater, Cursive III
Where: National Theater of the CKS Memorial Hall 21-1, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei (
When: Tomorrow night through Sunday Nov. 27, all performances at 7:45pm except for the matinees on Sunday Nov. 20 and Nov. 27, and Saturday Nov. 26, which begin at 2:45pm
Tickets: From NT$400 (students), NT$600, NT$900, NT$1,200, 1,600 and NT$2,000. Cloud Gate says the tickets are about 85 percent sold out for the Taipei performances.
Next month the company takes Cursive III on the road on weekends. It will be at the Tainan City Cultural Center on Dec. 2 to Dec. 3; the Kaohsiung City Cultural Center Chih-Der Hall on Dec. 9-10; the Chungshan Hall in Taichung on Dec. 16-17 and the Chiayi Performing Arts Center on Dec. 24 to Dec. 25.
"In wild calligraphy there are so many fast movements, so violent, but then it closes with very slow movement," Lin said.
"We have fast, slower and very slow," he said. "You have to be very strong so you can move very fast -- and very slow."
Much has been made of the training the company's dancers went through for the first two works in the trilogy -- the years of martial arts, taichi and qigong exercises, as well as meditation and calligraphy classes to help them develop mastery over their bodies and their breathing.
All this, of course, in addition to their normal dance classes.
"It's a mental discipline. The dancers take calligraphy [lessons] every Thursday afternoon when they are in Taipei. For five years already," Lin said, so they can "appreciate the movement itself, the meditation itself."
Cloud Gate's training program has helped the dancers achieve an unusual degree of control over their bodies and the strength for both very fast movements and excruciatingly slow ones as well.
Follow the master
In Cursive and Cursive II, Cloud Gate used slide projections to create backdrops of calligraphic masterpieces and those specific characters were then used by the dancers as inspiration. But since the idea behind Cursive III was the spontaneity of wild calligraphy, something different was needed.
The five weeks the dancers spent improvising may seem like a long time, but that was nothing compared to the time it took to get what Lin wanted for the Cursive III set, which is deceptively simple -- just a 10m long strip of rice paper.
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