Behind the scenes
A factory was commissioned to experiment, design and produce the special rice paper, while different recipes for ink and waterproofing agents were tried until Lin got the results he wanted.
"It took 10 months work to produce the paper," he said. "There are three patterns."
A solution of ink and water will be poured onto the top of the paper, with the balance of the mixture and the flow of the solution constantly changing. It will take the entire performance for the ink to work its way to the bottom of the paper.
"If you go backstage you'll see these thin tubes, 12m long, that feed the water and the ink onto the paper. We control it from backstage," he said.
Lin says the ink has its own "breath," its own speed, its own energy -- just like the dancers moving in front of it.
While the backdrops are disposable, the company isn't going to just throw them away. It has already auctioned off one of the ones done in rehearsals on eBay for NT$90,000 and plans to use the rest as fundraising gifts.
"We'll give away the paintings to those who donate NT$100,000 -- minimum -- to Cloud Gate," Lin said. "They can come backstage after a performance and choose the one they want."
The music for Cursive III is also a departure from that of the first two works. The score, by Jim Shum and Liang Chun-mei (
"In the end, the music is a collage of sounds -- waves, wind, flowing water, cicadas, some wooden instruments -- anything to do with chi," Lin said. "I went to Thailand and I heard the most beautiful cicada sound in Chiang Mai. So someone went to record the sound and we started from there."
Again Lin returned to the theme of nature in the piece.
"It's all about water and ink, the vegetation that made the paper, the breathing," he said. "In the end, calligraphy is about water, vegetation and breathing. Everything breathes on stage."
When asked how long the program is, Lin laughed.
"We timed it the other day at 68 [minutes] and the next time at 75. It will be about 70," he said.
"When you're doing wild calligraphy you do not control time," he said.
A long journey
"At the end of Cursive, I realized that it was just the beginning of a long journey," he said, returning to the discussion of the training and techniques the dancers had begun to study.
"Now there is Cloud Gate language -- no one else is moving this way. In the end you have to have an individual, unique language to speak," he said.
But when asked if this new language would be his legacy, Lin said that he wasn't interested in developing a "school" of dance, like the Martha Graham technique or Jose Limon.
"I care about a unique, fresh choreography. I'm interested in choreography, not in a system."
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