Walking into the National Theater last Thursday night to see Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s (雲門舞集) Nine Songs (九歌) was like returning to a much-loved haunt. The lotus pond at the front of the stage and the beautiful set reproducing Lin Yu-san’s (林玉山) wonderful Lotus Pond (蓮池) painting looked wonderful and much the same as remembered, even though all were brand new.
And that was true of the performance, since the casting for most of the 14 major parts has changed from five years ago.
Lee Ching-chun (李靜君) as the red-clad witch/shaman in previous productions was mesmerizing, appearing at times truly possessed as her body shook and rocked. However, Huang Pei-hua (黃珮華), who is one of two dancers who have taken on the iconic role, has made a good start at replacing Lee and is sure to grow further into the role.
Photo Courtesy of Company Ea Sola
In the Goddess of the Xiang River segment, the goddess is carried on stage standing motionless on two bamboo poles, trailing a very, very long white veil, looking very otherworldly — a presence enhanced by the ethereal, graceful, quivering moves of the role. Chou Chang-ning (周章佞) was amazing in this role in the last production, but Huang Mei-ya (黃媺雅) more than matched her on Thursday night. Chou will be alternating the role with Huang in the current run.
The one seemingly irreplaceable role in Nine Songs is that of God of the Clouds in the second act. Wu I-fang (吳義芳) created the role in the original production and reprised it five years ago, making the impossible seem possible, for the masked, loin-clothed God of the Clouds enters the stage on the back of two retainers and never touches the ground as he strides along, shifting his feet from one man’s shoulder to the other, posing in an arabesque or being lowered for a series of slow-motion rolls across his bearers’ backs. However, young Yeh Wen-pang (葉文榜), who has been a stalwart of Cloud Gate 2 for many years, performed admirably in the role. It was wonderful to see him dance with the main company.
Artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) said in an interview that he had trimmed at least one of the segments and tightened the piece up, but the difference was unnoticeable. One left the theater fully satisfied, and happy that Nine Songs has returned to the company’s repertoire.
Photo Courtesy of Company Ea Sola
Cloud Gate will be performing Nine Songs at the National Theater tonight through Sunday before beginning a six-city tour around the nation. However, all but the NT$400 seats have sold out for tonight through Friday night and the weekend shows are completely sold out. Tickets to shows outside Taipei are also moving fast.
What didn’t move very fast at all was the Company Ea Sola’s production of Drought and Rain (旱‧雨) at the Novel Hall on Saturday night. The 70-minute piece turned out to be more of an austere example of performance theater than a dance work, with traditional Vietnamese song given a major role.
The elderly farmers turned performers were nimble enough, but it would have been exciting it they had been given a bit more to do. There was too much repetition in their moves, though some of the images created — the entrance with life-sized cardboard cutouts of ancestors through the dark mists of time; the troupe draped in white rain ponchos, faces hidden under conical straw hats; the in-your-face presentations of hand-sized portraits of lost loved ones — stick with the viewer long after the show is over.
The six musicians, divided in half on either side of the stage were a strong presence throughout, and the theater had Chinese and English subtitles projected on either side of the proscenium of the Vietnamese lyrics, though the poetry was sometimes too metaphysical to be easily decipherable.
The Novel Hall Dance series, Asia and New Look, was set to continue with the Tao Dance Theater (陶身體劇場) from Beijing, on Oct. 13 and Oct. 14. However, one of the four Tao dancers has broken a foot and the troupe was forced to cancel the Taipei shows, though Novel Hall staff say they will try to bring them next year.
Next up in the series will be New Zealand’s Mau Dance from Oct. 19 to Oct. 21, with Birds with Skymirrors.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your