The annual Open Air International Arts Festival, Taipei (2007兩廳院廣場藝術節) will transform the plaza in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall with a weekend big top.
Last year, about 180,000 people attended the weeklong event. Despite its popularity, however, this year's circus has been shortened to three days because of renovations at the theaters flanking the park, art director Yang Chi-wen (楊其文) said. Though much shorter, the lineup includes diverse performances typical of circus nouveau.
Tonight, Hong Kong's Akash opens the festivities with a mix of pantomime, improvisation, theater and Sufi whirling. Goos Meeuwsen, of the Netherlands, will entertain with a clown performance.
Other events include French juggler Jerome Thomas' new production, Cirque Lili. Thomas is known for his ballet-like manipulation of props and imaginative poetry accentuated by the jazzy sounds of accordionist Jean-Francois Baez and sax player Vygintas Kisevicus.
Canadian artist and curator Jerry Snell's group returns this year with Flash, the first circus nouveau production made in Asia. Having premiered at last year's festival, this weekend the international troupe will perform new numbers, which blend special effects, acrobatic skills, live music, video, hip-hop, contemporary dance and kung fu. The show will go on tour for two years after its Taiwan performance.
Taiwanese troupes will also stage genre-mixing performances. Object Dance Company's (玩物舞蹈劇場) choreographer Chen Hsing (陳星) will perform a mixture of Chinese opera and martial arts. The award-winning Chi-Wu Kungfu Arts Group's (極武功夫藝術團) performance combines Western symphonic music, contemporary theater and choreography with kung fu.
Circus nouveau is a physical form of expression that aims to break down the barriers that confine artists, Snell said. He has traveled through Asia and Australia for the past year, building a network through which people can share their visions and build bridges between different cultures.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
Though the total area of Penghu isn’t that large, exploring all of it — including its numerous outlying islands — could easily take a couple of weeks. The most remote township accessible by road from Magong City (馬公市) is Siyu (西嶼鄉), and this place alone deserves at least two days to fully appreciate. Whether it’s beaches, architecture, museums, snacks, sunrises or sunsets that attract you, Siyu has something for everyone. Though only 5km from Magong by sea, no ferry service currently exists and it must be reached by a long circuitous route around the main island of Penghu, with the
RSS