Kaohsiung City Ballet (KCB, 高雄城市芭蕾舞團) founder Chang Hsiu-ru (張秀如) has an enviable record as a mentor and cultivator of both dancers and choreographers over her decades-long career, having marked 40 years as a dance teacher last year, while her company is now in its 23rd year.
She is bringing her best dancers to Taipei tomorrow for the start of the company’s annual Dance Shoe (點子鞋) production, with the three shows at the Experimental Theater at the start of a three-city tour.
The Dance Shoe productions are aimed at not only providing KCB members with more performing opportunities and the chance to dance under a variety of choreographers, but with giving choreographers born or working in southern Taiwan a platform for their creativity. It had done that and more. Since the first show in 2003, a total of 32 choreographers have created 71 works for the company.
Photo Courtesy of Kaohsiung City Ballet
Several now work with other troupes or have founded their own, such as former KCB dancer Yeh Ming-hwa (葉名樺), whose Nordic was performed at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park at the beginning of last month, and who has been collaborating with Horse (驫舞劇場), and Benson Tsai (蔡博丞), whose created more than half-a-dozen works for Dance Shoe shows, founded his B.DANCE (丞舞製作團隊) in 2014 and last year picked up three choreography awards at dance festivals in Europe.
This year’s program features five works by choreographers that have been frequent contributors to previous editions. Wang Wei-ming (王維銘), a former Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) dancer who teaches at Shu-Te University in Kaohsiung, and Wang Kuo-chuan (王國權), who spent 20 years working as a dancer in Europe before returning home, are probably the best known. The other three are Chang Ya-ting (張雅婷); Lai Hung-chung (賴翃中) and Dai Ting-ru (戴鼎如).
None of the pieces have been given “official” English titles, so the translations were worked out after some back and forth between the newspaper’s translation team and the company.
Photo Courtesy of Kaohsiung City Ballet
Wang Wei-ming’s piece The Stories They Told (她們在說故事) is set on five dancers and he said that he “stepped aside” in the creation of this piece, functioning more as an observer or co-author and letting the dancers have more of a hand in crafting the work.
Wang Kuo-chuan took Spanish flamenco as the starting point for his new work, Fragments of Madrid (馬德里的片段), a story about a wandering gypsy in which he will partner Ally Yeh (葉麗娟). He is the only choreographer who is also performing in the show.
Chang Ya-ting and Lai are both graduates of Taipei National University of the Arts (國立台北藝術大學) dance department, but their pieces show very different styles and outlooks.
Chang Ya-ting’s Murmurs (喃喃) features four dancers and two rather large flower heads. The piece was inspired by the way humans often mutter to themselves — about things they notice, questions they have or the way they are feelings — seemingly innocuous moments, but ones that are not forgotten and that sometimes bloom into something more consequential.
Lai’s duet for a man and a woman is entitled Grim Winter (凜凜) and centers on the emptiness and chill or winter and the hopes of the coming of spring.
Dai Ting-ru also created a duet, Waiting (從你的全世界路過), about life or the world passing a person by as they wait for something to happen.
After this weekend’s shows in Taipei, the company will return home to perform at the Kaohsiung Cultural Center’s Chihteh Hall next weekend and at the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center on Jan. 30.
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
President William Lai (賴清德) has championed Taiwan as an “AI Island” — an artificial intelligence (AI) hub powering the global tech economy. But without major shifts in talent, funding and strategic direction, this vision risks becoming a static fortress: indispensable, yet immobile and vulnerable. It’s time to reframe Taiwan’s ambition. Time to move from a resource-rich AI island to an AI Armada. Why change metaphors? Because choosing the right metaphor shapes both understanding and strategy. The “AI Island” frames our national ambition as a static fortress that, while valuable, is still vulnerable and reactive. Shifting our metaphor to an “AI Armada”
When Taiwan was battered by storms this summer, the only crumb of comfort I could take was knowing that some advice I’d drafted several weeks earlier had been correct. Regarding the Southern Cross-Island Highway (南橫公路), a spectacular high-elevation route connecting Taiwan’s southwest with the country’s southeast, I’d written: “The precarious existence of this road cannot be overstated; those hoping to drive or ride all the way across should have a backup plan.” As this article was going to press, the middle section of the highway, between Meishankou (梅山口) in Kaohsiung and Siangyang (向陽) in Taitung County, was still closed to outsiders
The older you get, and the more obsessed with your health, the more it feels as if life comes down to numbers: how many more years you can expect; your lean body mass; your percentage of visceral fat; how dense your bones are; how many kilos you can squat; how long you can deadhang; how often you still do it; your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol; your resting heart rate; your overnight blood oxygen level; how quickly you can run; how many steps you do in a day; how many hours you sleep; how fast you are shrinking; how
RSS