Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's (雲門舞集) second company, Cloud Gate 2, turns 10 this year, and it is clearly working hard to establish a reputation as strong as that of its big sister. Just how well it is doing will be on display in its Spring Riot tour, which begins next Friday at Taipei’s Novel Hall.
The starring role in production has been given to Cloud Gate 2's resident guest choreographer Cheng Tsung-lung (鄭宗龍) new work, *The Wall (牆).
The 32-year-old Cheng has held the post for three years, and his works for the company have become progressively more challenging.
The 21-minute The Wall, set to Michael Gordon's Weather One, is fast-paced, circles within circles. Cheng's dancers often appear isolated, emotionless; there is little, if any, eye contact between the dancers, or with the audience.
“This music has so much emotion, but still it's minimal. I keep telling them, ‘No emotion in the face, the emotion is in every movement and the music. You put it together [and it] creates the emotion. You don’t need to do angry, don't need to do sad,’” Cheng said after a press rehearsal in Jingmei on March 22.
“I like a big distance. Maybe it's inside [of me], maybe I'm scared, maybe I don't want to say too much. I like the wall; I feel safe,” he said.
The Wall is so fast, one has to wonder if Cheng is trying to kill the dancers.
“I hope so,” Cheng said with a laugh. “When I'm the choreographer I'm always confused and crazy. I don’t know why [or] what can I do. Maybe the bar [my standard] is too high.”
TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW
His bar maybe high, but it’s paying off. Cheng was off two days later for New York City with the other members of Horse Dance Theater (驫舞劇場) to perform Bones this week at the Joyce Theater as part of Eliot Feld’s Mandance Project. From New York he heads to Hong Kong, where the arts school will be doing his piece White Tape, before coming back for Spring Riot.
Another member of Horse is dancer/choreographer Huang Yi (黃翊), whose Body, Sound (身音) was such a hit for Cloud Gate 2 last year. Huang may be only 25 but he has been making waves on the dance scene for several years.
His new work is Flow (流魚), set to Greek avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis’ Shaar, which has a very horror movie feel to it. Huang said Feld turned him on to Xenakis.
“Two years ago Horse went to New York to do Velocity at the Joyce. After the show Eliot Feld invited us to his house for a party. He played some music that he really loved and that's when I first heard Xenakis, it really touched me,” Huang said. “I've already used this music two times before. It’s like people screaming, like people going crazy. I hope the audience can see the dancers panicking. It’s like the people in Taiwan now, they’re very unsure. People are screaming but its' not very clear.”
“He [Xenakis] was also an architect so his music was very harsh. His sketches are very clear and sharp. Each of the skethes is a different concept of music. He gave me a lot of ideas … helped me think of the organic structure to movement,” Huang said.
In Flow, dancers gather in small groups, and then quickly scatter. The Chinese title for Huang’s piece is “Flowing Fish.”
“It's like throwing a stone into a group of fish; they scatter but then return,” he said.
Huang credits Feld with helping him define what it means to be a choreographer.
“I'm very thankful I could talk with Eliot Feld. He reminded my why I want to dance. I love the movement. I hope I can make a language from the movement, that it will pay off,” he said.
‘PURE DANCE’
Flow is a departure from Huang’s earlier work, in which technology played a key role. Cloud Gate founder Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) said last year that he wanted Huang to leave the toys alone and get back to basics. This year Huang has.
“This piece is my first physical dance. This time for the first time it's pure dance,” Huang said.
Also on the Spring Riot program are works by Lin, Cloud Gate 2’s late artistic director Lo Man-fei (羅曼菲) and Ku Ming-shen (古名伸).
Lin's piece Spring Breeze (朢春風) is set to a popular Taiwanese love song. It's a very beautiful song, he said, about yearning and about Taipei’s bright young things, the kind who hang around Taipei 101. But the dance subverts the song's lyrics.
“Young ladies, urban babies — they are so cool, but do they still have that tender spot?” Lin said in a phone interview.
“It's about youth, confusion, yearning but you don't know what [you’re yearning] for,” he said. “It's played by Stephen Hough. He's a beautiful pianist from London. When he was at the National Concert Hall last year he played this song as an encore.”
Lin described Lo's 2005 All About Love (愛情), which is set to the music of Georges Bizet and Rachel Portman, as “tango-ish.”
“It's about youth, long legs, flirting. Of course they are not going to do the tango, but it has that flavor. It’s very bright and fast, very lively,” he said.
Lin has long been a fan of choreographer and Contact Improvisation proponent Ku. Her piece, Isthmus (緘墨之島), set to extracts from four Anton Vivaldi concertos, was first performed by Ku and John Mead at the Experimental Theater in 1993. Lin quickly picked it up for Cloud Gate Dance Theater, which performed it less than a year later on the main stage at the National Theater. Now he has added it to Cloud Gate 2's repetoire.
“Ku is really a contemporary master,” Lin said. “Ku's piece is about a couple and table. But the table could be a house, a bed, anything.”
BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
Lin founded Cloud Gate 2 to foster young choreographers and develop an outreach program to promote dance nationwide. The troupe performs on stage as well as at school gymnasiums, playgrounds and hospital lobbies. It gives dozens of workshops a year.
Cloud Gate 2 has become a proving ground for young dancers. The Jingmei press rehearsal on March 22 doubled as a birthday party, with former members invited back to celebrate. Looking at everyone lining up for a group photo, I was struck by the number of ex-members who have gone on to careers with companies both at home and abroad.
“It's been 10 years. This is one of the few companies [in Taiwan] where you work every day,” Lin said. “I'm very happy they have done so much, that the artistic level [of the group] is lifted.”
“I'm building up a company, I'm not babysitting,” he said.
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