What better way to prepare for the Mid-Autumn Festival, that yearly celebration of the ripeness of the moon, than to spend it inside a theater watching a handful of dancers do things that ordinary mortals can only dream of? The folks of the Taipei Crossover Dance Theater (台北越界舞團) have at least opted for an autumn-themed program for their performances tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon, and the Sunday matinee will allow dance-lovers to feast themselves on choreographer Zhang Xiao-xiong’s (張曉雄) latest work and still be able to spend the Moon Festival outdoors in the evening.
Taipei Crossover Dance Theater was founded in 1994 by four dancers from the first generation of Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集): the late Lo Man-fei (羅曼菲) Cheng Shu-gi (鄭淑姬), Yeh Tai-chu (葉台竹) and Wu Su-chun (吳素君), plus stage/lighting designer, Lin Keh-hua (林克華).
The dancers wanted a platform to continue dancing as they entered their 40s and to nurture their choreographic skills, while all five were interested in pushing the boundaries of modern dance theater and staging.
The founders have now turned the dancing duties over to a younger generation, but both the dancing and the choreography remain first rate.
While Zhang, who danced with the Australian Dance Theater and Dance Canberra, was not one of the founders of Crossover, the company turned to him first as a guest choreographer. He now serves as artistic director. He has provided works that challenge both the dancers and audiences and this weekend’s program offer a similar promise.
The program features Zhang’s newest work The Autumn Song (秋歌) and a piece he created two years ago for an international dance conference in Hong Kong, The Floating Life (浮生).
The Autumn Song is an older person’s reflection on his teenage years, the happy memories of a time shared with someone you loved, he said in a telephone interview.
“The piece comes from inside, rather than talking about the environment, external factors,” he said.
The Floating Life is much darker, though it also comes from Zhang’s memories.
“The piece is very heavy, … (it is) about people who could not choose the time and environment in which they lived, but who had the courage to face what they had to and the pride to do so.”
“I am so proud of my dancers,” he said. “They are so beautiful, they have really matured with the piece.”
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