Theater
Over the past 20 years, Rom Shing Hakka Opera Troupe (榮興客家採茶劇團) has strived to preserve the tradition of Hakka operatic art. For its latest production, The Yang’s Daughter-in-Law (楊家心臼), the company mixes modern theatrical vocabulary with Hakka musical elements such as mountain songs to tell the famous story of the Yang Family Generals (楊家將).
■ National Theater, Taipei City
■ Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2:30pm
■ Tickets are NT$300 to NT$2,000, available through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw
Scarecrow Contemporary Dance Company (稻草人舞團) started its “dance versus literature” series with Hans Christian Andersen last year. This year, three young women choreographers enter the world of Emily Dickinson in I Died for Beauty — Emily Dickinson (我為美殉身—艾蜜莉狄金生).
■ Experimental Theater, Taipei City
■ Tonight at 7:30pm, tomorrow at 2:30pm and 7:30pm, Sunday at 2:30pm
■ Tickets are NT$450, available
through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw
What is Love? Concert (關於洛芙的15首), Representation Theatre’s (再現劇團) official debut, is a concert-cum-theatrical performance themed on love. The cast includes six performers/musicians and five guest artists.
■ VU Live House (地下絲絨), B1, 77, Wuchang St Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市武昌街二段77號B1)
■ Tonight, Monday and Tuesday at 7:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm and 7:30pm
■ Tickets are NT$500, available online at tickets.books.com.tw
For its children-friendly Beauty and the Beast (美女與野獸), Tainaner Ensemble (台南人劇團) uses acrobatics, magic tricks, music and dance to tell the classical fairy tale reinterpreted by the troupe’s founder, Lu Po-shen (呂柏伸).
■ Tainan Municipal Cultural Center
BY HO YI
Spot — Taipei Film House (光點 — 台北之家) is wrapping up its annual POP Cinema program with highly anticipated retrospectives on Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville, Godard’s partner both in life and work and a feminist director in her own right.
The festival features 18 short and feature-length works by Godard that span the French auteur’s career from the 1960s to the present. The lineup includes The Little Solider (1963), which addresses the Algerian struggle for independence, Band of Outsiders, possibly Godard’s most accessible and popular work after Breathless, as well as the sci-fi film noir Alphaville (1965) and one of Godard’s most discussed films, Week End (1967), which is a ruthless attack on French bourgeois values.
After the events of May 1968, Godard moved on to make politically radical works with the Maoist Dziega Vertov group he formed. Films made during the director’s revolutionary period include the relatively audience-friendly Everything’s All Right (1972) and Here and Elsewhere (1976),
which explores representations of the “Other.”
Touching upon consumerism, violence and other social ills of capitalism, Slow Motion (1980) is seen as Godard’s return to cinema after spending the entire 1970s working with video. For Ever Mozart (1996) is lauded as a masterpiece that reflects the director’s philosophical views on war.
Mieville made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988 with her feature debut My Dear Subject, which entwines portraits of three women across three generations. Her Reaching an Understanding (2000) has its four characters, two of which are played by Godard and the director herself, asking fundamental questions about life.
French film scholar Dominique Paini will hold a lecture on Godard’s cinema at Spot tomorrow starting at 2pm. Paini is a former director of Cinematheque Francaise and curator at the Louvre.
▲The festival runs from today through Dec. 25 at Spot and moves to Kaohsiung Municipal Film Archive (高雄市電影圖書館) on Jan. 1 next year
▲Tickets cost NT$170 for Spot members and NT$200 for
non-members. Screenings in Kaohsiung are free
▲For more information and a complete screening schedule, visit www.twfilm.org/godard
(台南市立文化中心), 332, Jhonghua E Rd Sec 3, Tainan City (台南市中華東路三段332號)
■ Tonight and Thursday at 7:30pm, tomorrow at 2:30pm and 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm
■ Tickets are NT$500 and NT$700, available through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw
Classical music
Legend of Rainbow Fairy Nanguan vs Kunqu (霓裳羽衣 — 南管崑曲新唱), is a performance of nanguan (南管) music by Wang Xinxin (王心心), one of Taiwan’s most respected exponents of the art form. She will be accompanied on stage by kun opera (崑曲) star Qian Yi (錢熠), creating a unique mixture of two ancient musical and performance styles.
■ Today and tomorrow at 7:30pm
■ Novel Hall (新舞臺), 3-1 Songshou Rd, Taipei City (台北市松壽路3-1號)
■ Tickets are NT$600 to NT$2,000, available through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw
2009 Ju Percussion Group Winter Concert (2009朱宗慶打擊樂團冬季音樂會) will showcase the art of steel drums. The country’s most famous percussion orchestra will perform pieces ranging from Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia to Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
■ Today and tomorrow at 7:30pm (Taipei), Sunday at 2:30pm (Taichung)
■ National Concert Hall, Taipei City and National Taichung Library Chunghsing Concert Hall (台中中興堂), 291-3 Jingwu Rd, Taichung City (台中市精武路219之3號)
■ Tickets are NT$400 to NT$1,500 (Taipei) and NT$400 to NT$1,200 (Taichung), available through
NTCH ticketing or online at
www.artsticket.com.tw
The Northern Inextinguishable Passion (不滅的冰火熱情 — 北市交與居爾辛．歐內) is a concert by the Taipei Symphony Orchestra (臺北市立交響樂團) featuring guest conductor Wu Shou-ling (吳琇玲) and pianist Gulsin Onay. The program includes Tubin’s The Goblin, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major, Op. 100.
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