Yang Nai-hsuan (楊乃璇) founded her small dance troupe, Les Petites Choses Production (小事製作), in February 2014 with a handful of like-minded friends and collaborators, including dancers, a set designer and a music producer. A key goal was to work with a wide variety of other artists, breaking down barriers between different areas of the performing and visual arts.
Yang has over the past decade developed a strong reputation for her choreography, even as she continued to perform in her own work and that of others. She has set an ambitious pace for her company, which included the performace of Ache & Moan (生活是甜蜜) in December last year at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park.
For the company’s latest production, Seven Selves (七), Yang teamed up with experimental theater director and playwright Wang Chia-ming (王嘉明), who is best known for his work with Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group (莎士比亞的姐妹們的劇團).
Photo courtesy of Puzzleman
Yang has worked with Wang before, or rather for him, as a dancer in Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters’ August 2009 production Michael Jackson You Rock My World, a restaging of the group’s acclaimed 2005 show, Michael Jackson — Back to the ‘80s. She said she felt very honored that Wang agreed to work with her young troupe.
Wang told reporters that while Seven Selves is his first foray into choreography, he is not exactly a stranger to the world of dance, having been a street dancer as a teenager and having studied a bit of modern dance and martial arts.
He described Seven Selves as a dialogue between dancers and Ludwig von Beethoven, focusing on the religious, social and artistic connections of the number seven.
Photo courtesy of Puzzleman
Wang says other sources for the number seven include the Bible (God created the world in seven days), rainbows (seven colors), the seven deadly sins described in the second book of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Western music’s seven scales.
There are seven performers in the production: six dancers and a pianist who will share the stage with them.
In an era of omnipresent smartphones and tablets, there is a growing disconnect between people, even if communication between them is rapidly increasing, at least on screen.
Wang said he wants to show how the interaction of people parallel their physical conditions, the flow of a body’s emotions and the messages that their bodies emit, instead of what their electronic devices might say.
He has said he chose to use some of Beethoven’s piano sonatas for the score because he became intrigued with the German composer about five years ago.
Seven Selves will be performed at the Stage@Lab space at Taipei’s Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. The five-show run begins on Wednesday.
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