Dancer/choreographer Lin Wen-chung (林文中) founded WCdance five years ago, several months after leaving the New York City-based Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company to return home to Taiwan.
Since then he has developed a reputation for finely crafted, minimalist works for a handful of dancers that focused on stripping the excess from dance — be it space, form or function — beginning with Small (小) (2008), Small Songs (情歌) (2009), Small Puzzles (2010) and Small Nanguan (小南管) (2011).
Now he feels it is time to expand his horizons and find new challenges, so his latest creation is the appropriately titled Small End (小.結), which opens tomorrow night at the Experimental Theater in Taipei.
Photo Courtesy of WCdance
“It is the last in the Small series. Because in today’s environment — compared to 2008 — there are more and more small groups. Before the average dance performance was 10 to 12 dancers, but now there are many duets and trio shows,” Lin said in an interview. “About five years is enough. Small is restrictive… I need to give myself more freedom to express ... I like to give myself a challenge for each series. I want to step forward now.”
Asked what Small End is about, Lin said that it was a continuation of the series, which has been getting more “sparse” with every installment.
“It is about the philosophy of nothing, of emptiness,” he said.
Photo Courtesy of WCdance
“This piece is like a very quiet voice, a very minimum voice to speak to a loud society. Everything you think of modern dance, the beauty, the form, I take out. It is extremely minimalist.”
Of the five dancers, including Lin himself, there is only one new face. However, for his music and stage design, Lin picked new collaborators. Both are well-known in their fields and have worked with choreographers before, most notably Su Wen-chi (蘇文琪).
Sound artist Chang Yung-ta (張永達) likes computer music, Lin said, but his work this time is very, very quiet ... very different from his past works with other choreographers.
“I was trying to take the melody out ... I wanted to try voice, not music. He’s good at that,” Lin said.
Wu Chi-tsung (吳季璁) is a photographer, videographer and installation artist, and he has often created images that challenge perceptions of the physical and natural world.
Lin said his request to Wu was very simple. He wanted a huge black hole, to make everything in the theater disappear so that only the dancers’ bodies are left.
Speaking of bodies, audiences will be seeing a lot of the dancers, though not as much as Lin initially wanted.
“Originally I thought it would be a nude piece, but after talking with the dancers, they are too conservative, so now we are just covering ‘the important parts,’” Lin said.
He has already found out how easily shocked people in Taipei are, after receiving a police warning about the photo shoot for the troupe’s poster and advertisements, which features the backside of a nude man.
“We were on a roof, not on the street. I don’t know why people called the police. People in Taiwan are so afraid of seeing nude people,” Lin said, adding that the company had to write a report to the government explaining that they were just doing a photo shoot, nothing pornographic.
After this weekend, the company will take Small End on the road, to Greater Kaohsiung the following weekend and Greater Taichung on Oct. 23. It is a shorter tour than in previous years, because Lin said he does not have the time to do a longer one.
“I was asked to do my next production for TIAF [the National Theater Concert Hall’s Taiwan International Arts Festival] in March, so I can’t do too many places because I have to start on the new piece,” Lin said.
While he said that work, scheduled for the Experimental Theater, would feature nanguan (南管) music again, he was less sure about what direction he would take his company now that he is finished with small things.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But for now I need more freedom, to take forms and restrictions out.”
Dance notes
What: Small End
When: Tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30pm; Saturday and Sunday at 2:30pm
Where: Experimental Theater (國家戲劇院實驗劇場), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
Admission: NT$600; available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw or at 7-Eleven ibon kiosks. Friday’s show is sold out
Additional Performances:
Oct. 19 at 2:30pm and 7:30pm at the Tsoying Boy’s High School dance theater (高雄左營高中舞蹈班劇場), 55 Haikung Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市左營區海公路55號); Oct. 23 at 7:30pm at the Chunghsing Concert Hall (國立臺灣體育運動大學中興堂), 291-3 Jingwu Rd, Greater Taichung (台中市精武路291之3號)
Admission: NT$400; available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw or at 7-Eleven ibon kiosks
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated