Human’s interaction with, and impact upon, their environment is the subject of a new dance production at the Experimental Theater in Taipei for a second weekend in a row.
However, whereas Fan Xiang-jun’s (樊香君) Reminders from a Moth Orchid (泥花帖) for her E-Dance Theater (伊舞集) last weekend was inspired by orchids and a Buddhist teaching, and was very much centered on the natural world, Lee Ming-cheng’s (李名正) latest work for Body Expression Dance Theater (BodyEDT, 體相舞蹈劇場) is more urban-centric.
In Initial (空間起點), Lee attempts to explore the relationship between a city and its residents, how the daily grind and stress of a busy urban life affects people, and in turn, how people affect the city.
Photo Courtesy of The Body Expression Dance Theater
As Lee says in the program notes, the choices people make about the environment will ultimately shape the appearance of the land, while the history of a city is seen in the intersections of the old and the new.
Each city has its own unique urban culture and as humans shuttle between cities, whether within one country or across borders, they become like space travelers, reimagining the relationships between city and “home,” his notes say.
With Initial, Lee is continuing his exploration of how humanity, culture and the environment connect or clash, as well as how the world of dance can be enhanced — though not always — though its interactions with artists from other fields and media, which increasingly means the inclusion of digital technology.
Since 2004, most of his works have been centered on what he calls “contemporary urban consciousness.”
In Initial, the dancers are often confined within, and sometimes confounded by, small Plexiglas squares — apt representations of the cramped urban spaces so many people have to exist in — forcing the dancers to create new “body memories.”
The 14-year-old BodyEDT has been buoyed by its trip to France in July, where it was one of four troupes representing Taiwan at the 2014 OFF Festival d’Avignon, and received good reviews for its production, Mr R, which features LED lighting and holographic projections.
Fan and Lee are not the only artists in Taipei to have been focusing on humans and their relationships or “cohabitations” with their natural and manmade universes.
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