The Taipei Folk Dance Theater (台北民族舞團) is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a weekend program titled Crazy Taiwan 2008 at Taipei’s Metropolitan Hall that celebrates the history and the diversity of Taiwanese culture.
Dance professor Tsai Li-hua (蔡麗華) founded the Taipei Folk Dance Theater in September 1988 to preserve and promote the country’s dance heritage, which she saw as a mix of traditional Chinese dance and folklore, Hakka culture, Aboriginal cultures and modern dance. She drew upon her years of research into the music and movements of ethnic dances — going back to 1974 — to choreograph new pieces for her company, which was the first professional ethnic dance troupe in the country.
Tsai was part of a movement among Taiwanese theater and dance people in the 1980s to examine the cultural rituals of daily life and their society and move them from temple plazas and streets into theaters, a movement that included Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀), who founded U-Theater (優人神鼓), and Lin Lee-chen (林麗珍), who founded the Legend Lin Dance Theater’s (無垢舞蹈劇場). All three companies have become ambassadors for Taiwanese culture through the hundreds of performances they have given around the world.
On the program this weekend are four pieces, including one by Tsai, that reflect the company’s mission and achievement in interpreting Taiwanese culture. Tsai said the program aims to show how new meaning can be drawn from updating tradition while staying true to its original spirit.
Tsai’s piece, Wild Taiwan (狂想台灣), asks what does tradition mean and what role does it play in a technologically advanced, mass-communication society. Is tradition even still necessary? She has fused diverse elements from Chinese opera, Hakka culture, hip-hop street dance and Aboriginal culture into the work.
She said she was aided by input from her son, dancer-choreographer Lin Wen-chung (林文中), who took time out from working on his own company’s inaugural production next month to give his mom and her dancers some “street moves.”
Flower in the Mirror (鏡花), choreographed by Hu Ming-shan (胡民山), is both a paen to and an examination of Chinese classical dance esthetics and traditions.
Witch in the Wind (風中的巫師), by Liu Shu-ying (劉淑英), blends the traditional Ami culture of what Liu called “Ami cultural warriors” and 100 years of “witch dancing.”
Guo Ruei-ling’s (郭瑞林) Oh God! (神啊!) is a tribute to the role that deities play in everyday life in modern Taiwan: people ask them for help, pray to them for guidance and offer gifts ranging from food and tea to paying for opera performances for them. Tsai said the piece shows how the gods protect people, the earth and encourage everyday acts of kindness.
Taipei Folk Dance Theater productions appeal to both dance lovers and parents looking for family-friendly entertainment, with their mix of well-trained dancers, bright costumes and lively choreography.
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
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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