The 8213 Physical Dance Theater (8213肢體舞蹈劇場) is back at Taipei’s tiny Guling Street Theater with founder Sun Chuo-tai (孫梲泰)’s latest work, Boundless traveling; unlimited soul (視域無度).
When 8213 was at Guling last November, Sun’s work Pause (句點) was all about starting points and destinations.
This year’s work is an interesting adjunct to that piece because it was inspired by Sun’s wanderings around the Asia-Pacific region this year thanks to a grant he received from the Chinlin Asian Pacific Artist Exchange Project under the auspices of the WDAAP World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific.
Photo Courtesy of 8213 Physical Dance Theater
Sun won an artist-in-residence grant that took him to Fiji in March, where he worked with the VOU dance company, which was established in 2007 and now runs that nation’s first dance school. He also took part in the first Annual Epeli Hau’ofa International Dance Festival.
Sun also traveled to India, where he worked with the PADATIK troupe in Kolkata and gave workshops on traditional Beijing opera movement. Though Sun is known primarily as a contemporary dancer, he comes from a family of Chinese opera performers and studied traditional opera as a youngster.
Performing along with Sun this weekend are one of his frequent collaborators, Yang Hsiu-ju (楊琇如), along with Wang Hsiu-shan (汪秀珊), who joined Ku and Dancers (古名伸舞蹈團) this year but has also danced with Dance Forum Taipei (舞蹈空間) and many other local troupes since graduating from university more than a decade ago.
Photo Courtesy of 8213 Physical Dance Theater
Special guest artist is Fijian dancer Ratu Rusiate Rokilibau, a member of VOU.
In the program notes, Sun said Boundless traveling; unlimited soul is about how travelers find that through their journeys, they end up discovering their own roots, and their own identities in their own lands.
This identity quest is a byproduct of the encounters they have with the people they meet, the different cities they explore and the time spent on their own, he said.
The soundtrack for Boundless traveling; unlimited soul is by another frequent 8213 collaborator, musician and composer Jimi Chen (陳世興).
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