Dancer/choreographer Sun Chuo-tai (孫梲泰) founded the 8213 Physical Dance Theater (8213肢體舞蹈劇場) just over two years ago as a forum to explore the conflicts stemming from combining dance and drama as well as those between traditional Taiwanese values and Western influences in dance.
His latest production, Boundless: My Bliss (無國界∣我的天堂), is a collaboration with director and producer Jocelyn Chang (張育嘉) and explores the issues of boundaries and identity.
Talking animatedly in the third floor rehearsal space of the Guiling Avant-Garde Theater, Sun said the genesis of the work was his travels in the past two years to Colorado Springs, Colorado and Paris, where he had residencies underwritten by Taipei Artists Village and Council for Cultural Affairs, respectively. It is also a progression from the piece he created for his six-month Paris residency, La Baguette, about miscommunication.
“We are dancers, so I believe we don’t need language. But right now in the 21st century we have lost a lot of human feelings … Taiwan people are scared to touch. In the US people shake hands, the French kiss, the Spanish kiss three times … every touch I feel is important,” he said. “I auditioned in Paris, had dancers from five different countries. We had so many conflicts, we fought like dogs and cats. Even when we use Mandarin, with the Chinese dancer, we don’t understand each other because [some of] the words are different.”
As in Paris, the cast of Boundaries is international. There are two Americans, Casey Avaunt (who had residency at the Taipei Artist Village last fall) and Mimi Cave, Manon Greiner from Germany and three Taiwanese, Sun, Chen Xing-he (陳星合) and Hsueh Hsin-yi (薛欣宜).
“Everyone has a different talent. Casey does street dance very well, Mimi does yoga, the German does modern dance, one of the Taiwanese [Hsin-yi] has been hired by Cirque du Soleil for his martial arts training. Different countries, different talents,” Sun said.
In addition, Chang, the director, also gave each dancer a character to portray.
“For this piece I grew up a lot, I really had think about it: I am doing this for what? Why is each dancer is doing what they are doing? So I feel I really learned something,” he said.
A natural progression from talking about boundaries is discussing identity. In this day and age, being able to prove your identity is crucial, especially when you are traveling. But for an artist, this raises the question of defining identity.
“From 9/11 everything is changed. In America, oh my god, the security [level] will kill you, but you go to France it is the same. So every time I go to the airport I feel boundaries; this gives me a bad feeling. I don’t want to go,” Sun said. “In France, you have to have show all these different papers.”
To establish their identities, each dancer has a portable DVD player showing their face on the screen. But sometimes the expressions on the screen will be at odds with those on the dancers’ faces.
“What you see outside its sugar, but inside it is different. Sometimes you see the dark side,” Sun said.
He had a huge grin on his face as he recounted how the boyfriend of one of the dancers in his Paris show was upset when he saw the performance, which featured some very physical clashes, because he saw something he had never seen before — his girlfriend’s dark side.
“In a small theater, we can talk about the small things, the audience can see the dancers’ skin, the sweat, the real fights. We are very close to the audience, we can really touch them,” Sun said.
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