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The best in 50 years on show

Performers engage in the worldly dance of Carmina Burana. PHOTO COURTESY OF NEO-CLASSICAL

The Neo-Classic Dance Company (新古典舞團) is perhaps best known for its recreations of Tang dynasty dances and music. But the company is at heart a contemporary dance troupe and this weekend, the company has moved ahead, just a few centuries and a continent away, to restage founder and artistic director Lin Feng-shueh's (劉鳳學) production of Carmina Burana.

The Neo-Classic Dance Company, now in its 30th year, first performed Carmina Burana in 1992. The National Culture and Arts Foundation came up with the idea of celebrating the best performances of the past 50 years by asking six companies to restage one of their classic productions. This weekend it is the Neo-Classic's turn at the National Theater.

Lin said she recreated her Carmina based on a videotape of the original production and her memory, since less than a handful of the 23 dancers in the company were performing back in 1992.

German composer Carl Orff's 1937 Carmina Burana or "Songs of Beuran" was based on a collection of more than 1,000 poems and songs about love, life and liquor written early in the 13th century by wondering poets and young priests or theologians, who obviously had more than religion on their minds.

Orff took selections from this medieval manuscript and set them to music as a "scenic cantata." His pulsating score was composed for a large orchestra, chorus and soloists, with some sections purely instrumental and others for solo voices.

The O Fortuna sections that open and close the five-section cantata have become well-known over the years even to those who are not fans of classical music or dance as they have frequently been excerpted for use in movie scores and TV commercials.

The American choreographer John Butler was the first to choreograph Carmina Burana for a ballet, which he staged for the New York City Opera in 1959. In the 1960s and 1970s both Butler's version and those by other choreographers became a favorite of dance companies both in the US and other countries, while the cantata remained popular as a concert hall offering as well.

Lin has taken this medieval European paean to hedonism and given it an Eastern flavor. Although there is not really a story for Carmina, she said she made a simple narrative line.

"It's about a group of hermits who still haven't put the world completely behind. They break out of their monastery and experience the real world, but eventually they return to their lives as hermits," Lin said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

"The music has a lot of tension," she said. "It fits my personality; it's very dynamic." She said no props are used, so the dancers must use their bodies and mime to convey the story.

"The body is the only expressive tool... the hair of the dancers is used to represent spring, their skirts represent flowers," she said. "There are hoods attached to their costumes -- when they throw them off it represents the casting away of the core of their lives, their religious life. When they decide to return to their lives [as hermits] they put the hoods back on."

For this weekend's performances, the Neo-Classic company will be accompanied by the YinQi Orchestra (音契管弦樂團) and the National Experimental Chorus (國立實驗合唱團).

Performance notes:

What: Neo-Classic Dance Company
Where: National Theater of the CKS Memorial Hall, 21-1, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei?(北市中正區中山南路21-1號)
When: TTonight and tomorrow night at 7:30; Sunday afternoon at 2:30pm
Tickets: NT$300, NT$500, NT$700, NT$900, NT$1,500; available at the National Theater box office
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