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[WEEKENDER] NSO should throw caution to the winds

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Wednesday’s concert by the National Symphony Orchestra under Gunther Herbig had had its heart torn out before it even started. The young Russian pianist Alex Kobrin, scheduled to play Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K.466 — perhaps his most ambitious exercise in the medium — was unable to fit the concert’s revised date into his schedule (it was to have taken place on Sunday afternoon but was moved to Wednesday because of the typhoon). Beethoven’s two violin romances, and another for two violins by Pablo Sarasate, were substituted, giving Taipei the same program Kaohsiung was due to hear the following Saturday [20 Sept.].

The result was an airing of exclusively 19th-century works, all of them extremely well-known. Is this really what the NSO, currently experiencing low ticket sales, really should be offering? Next July’s Carmen will also be something no one will be hearing for the first time, replacing Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande, an opera by a composer young Taiwanese instrumentalists I know are often enthusiastic about.

I admit my limited receptivity to these three charming but slight violin works, Wagner’s Meistersinger Prelude and Brahms’ First Symphony was influenced by having spent the earlier part of the day listening to Janacek’s dynamic and highly original opera From the House of the Dead, vital music that has probably never been heard live here in Taiwan.

But I was prompted to wonder, nonetheless, whether this kind of extremely cautious programming was the right fare to offer Taiwan’s generally open-minded, well-educated and well-informed concertgoers. But at least November’s homegrown opera premier, The Black Bearded Bible Man, remains in the NSO program to challenge audiences with the promise of novelty.

U-Theater (優人神鼓) began its performance of The Walk at the National Theater with a short documentary of their 12,000km walk around Taiwan. One memorable shot was of an exhausted walker laying on a children’s slide, his head at the foot and his legs resting on the slope, red cap over his face. Given the quick pace at which was the company traveled, such exhaustion was merited.

The Walk moves for the most part at a much slower pace, but proved to be a very rewarding journey. Though there are some fast-paced segments, the image that lingers is of walkers moving single file, lifting each foot and putting it down ever so slowly, each muscle contraction and release a meditation in itself.

It’s always hard to describe U-Theater to someone who has not seen them. “A Zen drumming group” is the usual definition, but it is so much more. Each of the group’s productions is built around drumming, but company founder and director Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) started off as an actress and her sense of showmanship helps keep audiences riveted, even during set changes.

Abstract images of the ocean, leaves and forests were projected on the backdrop and a small drop scrim was artfully used both to conceal and to highlight the performers. In section four (晚風紅日), a bright sun blazed on the screen, while the sound of the small drums carried by the performers epitomized the sun beating down on your head on a hot day. The sun was replaced in section five (山谷流泉) with shifting ocean waves of teal blue, turquoise and sky blue, while the incredible voice of Aboriginal singer Inka Mbing helped carry some of the women on their journey, much as Iki Tadaw’s singing began the show.

A few blocks south at the Taipei Guiling Street Avant-Garde Theater on Saturday afternoon there was a journey on a much smaller scale, as Sun Chuo-tai’s (孫梲泰) 8213 Physical Dance Theater (8213肢體舞蹈劇場) explored cross-cultural differences and identity in Boundless: My Bliss (無國界∣我的天堂).

Sun allowed each performer to showcase their talent, even though at other times they were competing for attention — from one another and from the audience, physically and verbally. Mimi Cave’s dialogue on global warming and how practicing yoga and being a vegetarian made her a better person (so why should she have to worry about turning off lights and turning down the air-conditioner?) was spot-on.

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