Liu Feng-shueh (劉鳳學) has a 30-year history of creating abstract and minimalist dance performances that draw on Oriental and Western elements. The artistic director of the Neo-Classical Dance Company (新古典舞團) has, however, over the past few years taken an interest in the anthropological aspects of Aboriginal culture, elements that she has incorporated into Flying Fish in Silence (沉默的飛魚), her latest dance creation that begins tonight at the National Theater.
Part Aboriginal dance and part modern dance, the performance was inspired by the Tao people's (達悟族) flying fish ceremony that takes place every spring and summer on Orchid Island (蘭嶼). But Lin doesn't relegate her focus to one tribe, as she perceives dance to be a universal medium found in all cultures.
She distills the movements of the Aboriginal dances that she witnessed and experienced during her travels and studies of Taiwan's indigenous peoples, and blends them with modern dance. The result is a sublime and simple work of the soul.
The stage is bereft of a set, which focuses the audiences' attention on the dancers' movements that tell the story of cultural confrontations.
During rehearsals on Wednesday afternoon, a man lugubriously walks diagonally across the stage holding the hands of two children (his perhaps?) as rain falls down from the back of the stage. The atmosphere created by the man walking slowly and the simplicity of the movements creates a pathos rarely executed so well on the stage.
In a different, more light-hearted scene, scores of dancers link arms, demonstrating the solidarity that can be found in a people, tribe or nation.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF NTCH
Note: As of press time, Flying Fish in Silence had almost sold out.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would