Chen Chin-yi (陳晉億) has spent a lifetime studying the art of lion dance, starting out aged 9 following troupes as they went from temple to temple in search of employment.
It was a hard life — he recalls dancers sleeping on doorsteps and traffic islands whatever the weather, traveling from town to town as they followed an annual roster of temple fairs.
In A Life of Performance (藝陣人生), which opens at the Taipei County Arts Center (台北縣藝文中心演藝廳) tonight, he brings his life story to the stage.
The performance is one of the most ambitious productions of the Team-Win Lion Dance Theater (廷威醒獅劇團), founded 10 years ago by Chen and his two elder brothers.
Over the past decade, Chen has extended the boundaries of traditional street arts like lion dancing to broaden their dramatic appeal.
With A Life of Performance, he brings together dancing lions, dragons and deities in a show that reveals the lot of an itinerant performer.
“When other people had a happy event, whether it was a marriage or opening a new business, we would be there to help them celebrate,” Chen said.
The group is a regular participant in religious parades. But Chen laments that for many street artists, such performances have become a routine.
“In many cases, performers, or even pilgrims, don’t really understand what is going on at these religious events,” he said. “It’s just a bit of excitement.”
Chen established Team-Win Lion Dance Theater to revitalize the art of the lion dance. His lions are heavily anthropomorphic, and the skill of the theater’s performers is in creating a character that audiences can relate to.
“For us, it’s not about high jumps and somersaults,” Chen said, “but about giving the lion a personality.”
Chen’s mission hasn’t been easy, though.
“In the past, you simply had to remember your moves, and be in the right place at the right time to produce a good lion dance,” said brother Chen Chin-de (陳晉德), a co-founder of the troupe. “Now even the lion gets to speak. And many of the movements are much more subtle than the big leaps and bounds of a traditional dance. We’ve had to develop all this over time, it’s a process of constant innovation.”
A Life of Performance includes many traditional street art routines, including giant puppets of guardian spirits Thousand-Mile Eye (千里眼) and Wind-Accompanying Ear (順風耳) and Zhong Kui (鍾馗) the demon slayer, who are all regulars at religious festivals. Chen has also incorporated non-traditional performances, including mime, to enrich the experience.
“This is all about taking traditional performances out of their narrow category, bringing them into contact with theater, and even making these ancient performance techniques part of the broader theatrical repertoire,” Chen said.
Chen believes this approach will introduce traditional performance skills to wider audiences for whom the once vibrant life of the temple courtyard is ancient history.
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