Showcasing the latest in new circus talent from the prestigious National Circus School is the contortionist Lena Reis who will perform high above the audience. Bursting with grace, sensuality and dazzling choreographic precision, Canadian Duo Scarlette delivers an astonishing display of aerial acrobatics. Cory Tabino, formerly with Cirque du Soleil and David Bernbaum, who has trained and performed with Chinese acrobats and the Peking Opera as well as having studied martial arts in a Shaolin monastery in China, will collaborate in a performance that incorporates music and movement.
The musical line up is bewildering in its multiple genres and forms with The Gleams hitting the main stage tomorrow to show off their innovative mix of western folk music tinged with traditional Taiwanese opera forms, voiced through both traditional Chinese and western instruments.
The festival will also treat spectators to the collective blowing of Schal Sick Brass Band, a musical line up who "think global — blow local." Known as "multi-culti" for the initiated, this Cologne Carnival band fuses the sound of a pumping brass band to explore the music of other cultures. Another European sensation, Kocani Orkestar is making the trek from their native Macedonia to give Taiwan a taste of some potent Turkish/Bulgarian rhythms and gypsy brass band sounds.
Local favorites the Betel Nut Brothers will preach their version of Aboriginal blues using acoustic guitars, conga drums and Amis wooden and bamboo drums. And of course no performance festival would be complete without the jugged-out, hipped-up and get-down tunes of David Chen & the Muddy Basin Ramblers.
Snell hopes the festival will start a dialogue between local performers and those from other countries in Asia and even the west.
"It's important because of the link we are trying to build between Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and [South] Korea which will be a not only a bridge to bring foreign artists here but also artists from here abroad," he said.
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