Dance takes center stage at the 2010 Taiwan International Festival at the National Theater this weekend and the next two, with companies from France, Germany and Taiwan presenting some of their newest works.
The two European troupes, Ballet Preljocaj and Tanztheater des Staatstheaters Darmstadt, are offering their directors’ takes on two literary classics of very different sorts and the psychological underpinnings of each. Both are imbued with darkness, humor and dramatic flair. Both examine obsessions. Only one, however, has some very bizarre costumes by one of the greats of contemporary French fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier.
Stepmothers often have a bad reputation. In Western fairy tales, only Cinderella’s stepmom comes off worse than Snow White’s, probably because the protagonists in these stories are the young women.
French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj has taken a somewhat different tack in his 2008 contemporary ballet Snow White, based on the Grimm brothers’ tale, by focusing on the motivations of the stepmother.
As he explains it in his company notes, Preljocaj looked at the stepmother’s “narcissistic determination not to give up on seduction and her role as a woman, even if it means sacrificing her stepdaughter.”
He has said he decided to create Snow White because he wanted a change from abstract ballet and he had often read the fairy tale to his children. He also used the writings of child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, especially a translation of The Uses of Enchantment, to examine the symbolism in the story.
Ballet Preljocaj’s Snow White, which opened last night and runs through tomorrow before moving to Kaohsiung next week for two performances, is a rarity in contemporary ballet — a narrative, romantic ballet. Running at just under two hours, the 26-dancer Snow White is set to excerpts from Gustav Mahler’s symphonies, with additional music by 79 D, and features Japanese ballerina Nagisa Shirai in the title role and Celine Galli as her nemesis, Queen Domina (who has the best costumes).
The visually stunning set pieces, by Thierry Leproust, include a huge mirror that’s almost as big as a wall and a mountain for the seven dwarfs to climb down as they make their memorable entrance (they are miners after all).
Preljocaj, whose 26-year-old company is based in Aix-en-Provence, studied classical ballet before turning to contemporary dance, training with Karin Waehner and Merce Cunningham. He worked with several modern dance troupes in France and studied Noh in Japan before beginning his choreographic career in 1984. In addition to creating pieces for his own troupe, his works can be found in the repertoire of major companies around Europe and in the US.
Taiwanese choreographer Lin Mei-hong
(林美虹) also trained as a classical ballet dancer before being mesmerized by a performance of German choreographer Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wupperatal and switching to modern dance.
The Yilan-born Lin began by studying classical Chinese dance — she was a member of Lanyang Dance Troupe (蘭陽芭蕾舞團) as a youngster — before moving to Italy to study ballet and then Germany, where she studied at the Folkwangschule in Essen, where Bausch and several other leading European choreographers have trained.
She studied with Bausch for several years and was artistic director for Tanztheater Dortmund before becoming artistic director of the Dance Theater in Darmstadt in 2004.
Her company was originally scheduled to perform her latest creation, Violett, Lila, PurPur for the festival, but it wasn’t finished in time, so the program was changed to Schwanengesang (Swan Song), which premiered in Darmstadt in November and will have its Asian premiere next Friday night.
Like Preljocaj, Lin’s Schwanengesang was inspired by literature, in her case Belgian poet George Rodenbach’s 1892 novel Bruges-la-Morte, as well as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s opera Die Tote Stadt, which was also based on the book.
Rodenbach’s novel is about a man who moves to Bruges, Belgium, after the death of his wife, hoping to find some kind of solace in the cathedral-filled city. He becomes entranced with a dancer he sees at the opera because of her resemblance to his late wife.
While Preljocaj’s queen is obsessed with youth and sexuality, Rodenbach and Lin’s hero becomes obsessed to the point of madness with death, love and memories. In an interview on Wednesday, Lin said she liked Die Tote Stadt, which is why she decided to read the book, and though the story had possibilities for dance, she didn’t want to retell the entire narrative. She chose six scenes that she felt conveyed the key motifs, the ones that touched her the most.
She said the working title of the piece had been “Demon Seed” because it examines the demons that are inside everyone.
Schwanengesang is set to score by Michael Erhard, while Thomas Grube designed the sets
and costumes, some of which are as outlandish
as Gaultier’s.
After two weekends of strongly narrative-driven work, the pace at the National Theater will change when a troupe run by another Lin takes to the stage. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) will perform Listening to the River (聽河), the newest work by artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民), from March 18 to March 21.
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