Taiwan’s performance spaces and dancers made an impression on US choreographer Mark Morris and members of his company during a recent visit that saw them bouncing around Taipei and its suburbs as well as venturing out to Yilan County.
The Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) arrived in Taipei on Oct. 31 for a nine-day visit that was the third leg of a DanceMotion USA program Asian tour sponsored by the US Department of State that had already taken them to Cambodia and Timor-Leste and would wrap up with a tour of several cities in China.
The 34-year-old troupe was back in town a little more than four months after making its Taiwanese debut at the National Theater under the auspices of the Management of New Arts.
Photo: CNA
A KIND OF HOMECOMING
Morris joked in an interview last Thursday that he almost felt like he was coming home, given that the he had been given the same room at the Grand Taipei Hyatt that he had had in June, though he stressed that the timing had nothing to do with him — it was all down to the promoter and then the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), which “curates,” or produces, the DanceMotion USA program.
Morris, his company’s music director, Colin Fowler, and dancers Lesley Garrison and Maile Okamura all looked remarkably fresh for people who have been living out of suitcases and traveling almost non-stop for four weeks when they gathered at the American Institute in Taiwan’s American Center for a final round of media interviews.
Photo: Hu Shun-hsiang, Taipei Times
Three companies, including Morris’ were selected to participate in this year’s DanceMotion USA program. Morris said that he had been asked to take part in the DanceMotion USA when it began in 2010, but it took until this year that details of a tour could be worked out to his satisfaction.
“I was asked when it first started, but they didn’t have the wherewithal to provide the style to which I’ve become accustomed … including a musician, management on the tour … I would have to supplement it monetarily to an untenable degree,” he said.
His is a big group for the program, 14 in total, including nine dancers, for what Morris has been calling “Excursions 2014,” and which he said “been fabulous.”
Photo: CNA
Their trip was also the first time Taiwan was included in the DanceMotion USA program, though it used to be included on State Department cultural tours in the 1960s and 1970s.
In addition to the workshops, classes and outreach programs that the dancers are involved in, they also have to provide reporting on their experiences to the State Department. Fowler said they have to post reports on social media, along with pictures and videos.
Morris, however, is exempt from such tasks, though not just because he is the troupe’s director.
Photo: Hu Shun-hsiang, Taipei Times
“Social media [is] not his milieu,” Fowler said, as Garrison and Okamura grinned.
Asked what it was about modern dance that makes it such a good vehicle for cross-cultural communication programs, Morris said he didn’t think it was.
“I don’t know that it is better. I can only speak for what I do … the categories are simply ‘good’ or ‘not good,’ the medium doesn’t make much difference,” he said.
Photo: Hu Shun-hsiang, Taipei Times
“We’re good at this,” he said about “outreach programs,” which is a term he hates. “It is a principal part of what we do.”
“We have a giant school. It’s what we do all the time, all the producing organizations in the US compelled to do this kind of program,” he said, noting that the company is on the road about six months out of the year, but when it is at home at the Mark Morris Dance Center Brooklyn — coincidentally just across the street from BAM — many of his dancers teach and give workshops.
He also stressed that he was not promoting modern dance on this trip.
Photo: Hu Shun-hsiang, Taipei Times
“I am not a missionary,” Morris said. “We are interested participants and receive what is offered to us… we are not vamping around.”
“I’m not shopping for my ‘dance museum’ — it’s all person-to-person,” he added later on in the interview.
Garrison said she enjoyed the exchanges on the trip, the opportunity to take class, to dance together, “hand in hand, looking each other in the eye.”
PARKINSON’S DISEASE PROJECT
One of the classes that Garrison taught was at the Taipei YMCA for people with Parkinson’s disease and their carergivers, organized by the National Taiwan University Hospital Parkinson’s Center.
Morris’ company created a Dance for PD program in 2001 that has grown to provide teacher training and free classes for people with Parkinson’s disease, both in the US and in several other countries, and Garrison is one of the company members who has been trained to teach such classes.
“It was great, 70 to 75 people … for a lot of them it was their first experience,” she said of the YMCA encounter, adding that it had been “moving, exciting.”
Fowler said the first question asked after the class was over was: “When are we coming back?”
Dance for PD is not designed as a therapy program, Morris emphasized — it’s dancing and music, and the information is available on DVDs for home study. It’s obvious that he — and his team — are proud of the program and its success. The students in Brooklyn have even put on a performance, he said, while Garrison added that he would be missing a second show, which is taking place while the company is on this tour.
DIVERSITY IN DANCE
All four were enthusiastic about their visit to National Taiwan University of Arts (國立臺灣藝術大學) on Monday last week, where Morris was amazed by the size of the theater (“it was wonderful”), and to Yilan County, where they visited the National Center for Traditional Arts — they loved the park — and then met with members of the Guo-Gang Beijing Opera Company (國光劇團), Lan Yang Dance Troupe (蘭陽舞蹈團) and Lan Yang Taiwanese Opera Company (蘭陽戲劇團).
Morris said seeing people of all ages and interests using the park — just like seeing all the school dance clubs utilizing the open space around the National Theater back in June — was amazing. Parks have to be used, he said, or else they become dangerous places where no one wants to go.
Garrison and Okamura said that interacting with the opera students had been great, especially because their performances were so great even with costumes or make-up.
Seeing the diversity of music, dance here was interesting, Morris said, and hearing about a lot of the same problems, passions, loves.
“To find the commonalities has been a moving experience,” Fowler said.
The four also said that learning to adapt has been crucial on the DanceMotion tour. While Morris said he is an old hand in Asia, having been visiting the region since 1980, for many in his company it was something new.
“We have to adjust all the time… perform in less-than-ideal conditions, we have learned so much as a company,” Okamura said, which drew a lot of nods from the others.
Garrison said that there had been “pretty fantastic surprises.” She also loved Taipei’s night markets.
Morris enthused about the floor that the company had built at the Khmer Arts Theater in Kandal Province, Cambodia, so that it could give a performance.
“We don’t dance on cement, it’s injurious. Johan Henckens had to build a wooden sprung floor. He built an immaculate floor in just two days …. The workers slept on the floor so no one would steal the wood. We left it as a gift to them,” he said.
While the Taiwan trip was not, perhaps, as challenging, it was certainly packed, with several activities every day.
Last Thursday, the group’s last full day in Taiwan, they gave a workshop at the Garden of Hope in Taipei for female migrant workers in the morning, and then visited the Legend Lin Dance Theatre’s (無垢舞蹈劇場) studio in Yonghe, New Taipei City, where members of the two companies taught each other portions of their repertoires.
It was apropos that the MMDG’s visit ended with the Legend Lin troupe — was almost karmic in a way. Company founder Lin Lee-chen (林麗珍) has credited seeing a performance by the Paul Taylor Dance Company in Taipei in 1967 — a visit that was part of a Asian tour organized by the State Department — for inspiring her to pursue a career in dance.
Asked what they would be taking back home with them from this trip, Morris quipped that they wouldn’t know that “until the last gift shop.”
However, many of those who had the chance to meet with Morris and his dancers said they took memories that will last a long time.
While Taipei has become a well-known stop on the touring calendars of many big-name foreign troupes and performers — from the Mariinsky Ballet to Tanztheater Wuppertal to Akram Khan — Taiwanese, whether dancers, students or other members of the public, usually do not have a chance to meet them.
Chang Ting-ting (張婷婷), an assistant professor at National Taiwan University of Arts, said students at her school thoroughly enjoyed the chance to interact with Morris’ dancers as the troupe conducted workshops, a demonstration and held a master talk.
“I think it was a wonderful experience for students. Students found it exciting to dance with a professional company on the same stage for the exchange showcase. Students also got the chance to watch MMDG dancers show how they prepare [for a show],” she said.
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
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
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