Serious ballet students in Taiwan have faced an uphill battle for years in terms of getting enough class time and performance opportunities, even at the university level. Wu Ching-yin (吳青吟), founder and artistic director of the nine-year-old Taipei Royal Ballet (台北皇家芭蕾舞團), and her husband Hong Kang-jie (洪康捷) decided a competition would help inspire students to improve their technique. The 3rd National Ballet Competition is being held this weekend in Taipei for dancers ranging in age from 10 to 24. Eighty dancers from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Canada will by vying for cash prizes and certificates, ranging from NT$2,000 for an award of excellence up to NT$8,000 for the first place winners in each category. The actual competition tomorrow is not open to the public, but the prizewinners will perform for the public at two shows on Sunday in the theater at the Taipei Cement Building.
■ 3rd National Ballet Competition, Sunday at 2:30pm and 7:30pm at the Shih-ming Hall of the Taiwan Cement Building (台泥大樓士敏廳), 3F, 113 Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (北市中山北路二段113號3樓).
■ Tickets are NT$600 and NT$800, available at the NTCH box office or online at www.artsticket.com.tw. Only NT$800 seats are left for the matinee performance
Courtesy of Taipei Royal Ballet
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and