"I never really had [the] talent to do the creative side [of performance]," said Ping Heng (平珩), who has just stepped down from a two-and-a-half year stint as artistic director at Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center. "I think you have to be crazy to become an artist and I always think I never push myself [hard enough]."
Instead, she pursued a career as an artistic director maintaining a grueling schedule of twelve-hour days, six days a week. During her stint at the center, Ping also oversaw a number of festivals and ran her own dance company.
Her next mission is to increase the profile of mid- to small-size companies by encouraging collaborations with international artists, both at home and abroad.
PHOTO: NOAH BUCHAN, TAIPEI TIMES
With many cities throughout Taiwan planning to build government funded theaters, now is a propitious time to increase the profile of local performance art companies.
Ping questions the practicality of building large theaters, particularly the one planned for Kaohsiung, which will be larger than Taipei's National Theater.
"People in the south don't have the habit to pay for [large-scale] performances," she said. "They will go to free performances but to make a regular visit every month is not a habit yet."
Rather than building large theaters, Ping is lobbying local governments to focus on medium sized theaters. "We have experimental theater and big theater … companies who can use the national theater are the top companies. But what we need are more … 800 to 1,000 seat-theaters, like the Metropolitan Hall (城市舞台)."
As a graduate student at New York University's Tisch School studying ballet back in the early 1980s, Ping and other Taiwanese expats were looking for a way to take what they learned in the classroom to the stage.
After graduating, Ping returned to Taiwan and started Taipei Dance Workshop (皇冠舞蹈工作室).
The concept of an artist workshop was so revolutionary back in 1984, there wasn't even an accepted Chinese translation for the phrase.
Ping's Taipei Dance Workshop attracted artists from abroad who would come to Taiwan and do workshops with local actors and dancers, teaching them different styles of dance or theater.
The workshop taught Ping how to work with different performers, collaborate with choreographers and push younger performers to become more professional.
"During the 1980s we did not have a lot of performing arts companies. People [would] go to class and then they wouldn't have any opportunities to do performances … . We [created] those opportunities," she said.
Once she had a pool of dancers to work with she founded her own company, Dance Forum Taipei (舞蹈空間舞蹈團), in 1989. The company is an open forum for various artists to come together to present and study their ideas. The company has had over 500 performances throughout the world. Building on the success of Dance Forum Taipei, she teamed up with like-minded artists and established the Asia Arts Network (亞洲藝術網絡), a network of theater and dance groups throughout Asia that promoted exchange programs.
"I think for cultural policy of which performance art is a part, you have to have a long-range vision." But Ping says up until the mid-nineties, there was little cultural policy to speak of at the national level, especially when it came to performance art.
To counter this problem, Ping and other members of the artistic community came up with Performance Arts Alliance (表演藝術聯盟) in 1999, a lobby group for the performance arts, of which she was chairperson for the first four years.
"That was the first time that a performance art group learned how to talk to both government [officals] and legislator[s]," she said.
Having helped develop a local dance scene, Ping and her associates sought to persuade legislators and government officials that the local performing arts could raise the country's international profile.
"We believe that culture is the most powerful weapon for Taiwan especially if you bring your performance group abroad. That's the best way for people to see Taiwan," she said.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated