Taiwan audiences will get a chance this week to view the first full-length flamenco dance drama performed in the country. Teresa Barja (the flamenco stage name of choreographer and Soochow University theater professor Catherine Diamond) has adapted The House of Bernarda Alba (La Casa de Bernarda Alba) by Spanish dramatist and poet Federico Garcia Lorca into The Daughters of Bernarda Alba (白納德的女兒), a four-act performance set to traditional flamenco songs.
The House of Bernarda Alba was completed in June of 1936, just two months before Lorca, 38, was shot by Nationalist troops at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Set in Andalusia, the original play centers around the five daughters of the title character who struggle to break free of the oppressive social mores rigidly upheld by their widowed mother. While adapting the play, Barja cut the number of daughters down to three, in part to give the audience a chance to get to know the women as individuals.
"One important thing was to give them all very distinguishable characteristics so they are not these anonymous three girls," says Barja.
The lead dancers in the drama - Beta Chen (陳雅惠), Jessie Wang (王思穎), Luisa Lu (呂姿儀), Lucia Huang (黃惠汝), Sandra Tsai (蔡明娟) and Paco Lin (林志遠) - have all trained in Spain and are some of the most experienced flamenco dancers in Taiwan. They contributed to the choreography of the drama, drawing from their individual training in different flamenco forms to create their solos. The diversity of movements and depth of emotions expressed through the dances will surprise those who think of flamenco as just a sexy lady in a tight dress with a rose clenched between her teeth.
On Page 16 of tomorrow's Taipei Times, staff reporter Catherine Shu talks to Barja and the cast of The Daughters of Bernarda Alba about the challenges they faced while adapting a play by one of world literature's most-renowned prose artists into a performance that relies solely on movement, gesture and traditional flamenco music.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
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