Taiwanese choreographer Lin Mei-hong (林美虹) has carved out a career in Europe, where she has lived for more than three decades and has been artistic director at the Tanztheater des Staatstheaters Darmstadt since 2004. The Yilan-born 50-year-old talked with the Taipei Times on Wednesday morning about dancing, her career and her newest work, Schwanengesang, which will be performed at the National Theater next weekend.
Taipei Times: When did you start studying dance?
Lin Mei-hong: I was 9 or 10, but I played around earlier. By the first or second year, very young, I knew I loved it. I was so happy every time I could go to dance class. I always prepared my things early, getting everything ready to go to class. I left my home and joined the Langyang group [Lanyang Dance Troupe (蘭陽芭蕾舞團)] very early on. We lived together and traveled together.
TT: When did you know you wanted to choreograph?
LM: Also very early on. After five years of dancing I knew I wanted to choreograph. Whenever the teacher would say “imagine you are your favorite animal” or “listen to this music and create something,” I was very happy.
TT: Why did you choose do go to Italy to study dance? (She studied at the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome.)
LM: Because of the scholarship. If I could choose again now, maybe I would choose elsewhere. So many Taiwanese go to Germany or Britain. Lanyang’s founder is Italian [Father Gian Carlo Michelini], so maybe that influenced me. Going to Italy at 16 — it was not my first time to go there, but before it had always been with the group — but to go there to live, to live with a family, they were very important years for me. The Italians were so different, so passionate; there is always so much drama. They are always talking with their hands.
TT: After six years, why did you decide to move from Italy to Germany?
LM: When I finished my studies — a completely classic European ballet education — I was planning to come home, but fortunately I saw Pina Bausch’s company [Tanztheater Wupperatal] in Rome. It was a shock to my soul — something so shocked me, touched me — I called my mom to say “I have to stay here [Europe] for a while.”
It was a big culture shock going to Germany — German people, what a shock, so different from the Italians. I went to study German over the summer before starting school, I didn’t go home to Taiwan. The first half-year was so tough. Essen was so ugly after Rome; it’s cold, industrial, gray.
We started everything all over again from the beginning — an eight-count plie down, eight-count plie up. It didn’t matter that you had studied ballet for years, they wanted you to start all over and do it their way. But it was a good mentality, it taught you a new attitude, which is the most important thing.
After one year I started to feel at home because it was like going back to Chinese dance, which is very low [the center of gravity], while ballet is very high. The training made you think about simplicity, to think very clear, without a lot of decoration. Again, it was about going back to my roots, going low, technique-wise.
TT: When did you decide to stay in Germany, to work with Pina Bausch? (Lin graduated in 1989 from the Aachen Folkwang College of Arts Kinetographie Laban Research Institute.)
LM: Not right away. The decision to stay on came later. The [school’s] way of thinking was important for me, while the technique [Bausch’s] was not so different for me. When I finished school, the Folkwangschule, it was a totally different world. It’s not the real world and that is why its graduates can’t find jobs anywhere else. (Laughs.)
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