Lin wanted to stage Oculus as both a memorial to Wu and to help his youngest dancers, who were hit not only with the death of Wu, whom many saw as a big brother, but by the death of their company's founder and artistic director, Lo Man-fei (羅曼菲) a few months later. But even more, he wanted to ensure that more people have the chance to see Wu's work.
"It's [Oculus] a landmark work. I wanted to challenge those that come after him and challenge the dancers," he said. "When he passed away I invited three dancers from Kassel — classmates and friends from Essen — to come last summer for three weeks of intensive rehearsal."
"Wu was born in southern Taiwan, a lower middle-class family — you don't expect anyone from that village to become a great artist … he had such energy … he was so young," Lin said.
He also came to dance in a very roundabout way. Wu was a theater major at university and didn't start his dancing career until he entered the Folkway Hochshule in Essen, Germany, at 24. He began choreographing at 27.
"He was a fatso. He started dance classes at university to lose weight," Lin said. "He got the theater department kids to take ballet — this fat guy really struggled at the bar — even in his last days he loved ballet … he would come out of the hospital to give Cloud Gate 2 ballet class. He would plead with the doctors, we would send a car for him."
"He was wonderfully sensitive to music — very rare among young choreographers," Lin said.
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