For several years the National Theater Concert Hall has hosted a “New Ideas” series in the late spring, early summer, one for dance and one for theater. This year it has tweaked the English-language title to “Innovation Series,” but the goal remains the same: to introduce up and coming Taiwanese artists to audiences at the nation’s premier performance venue.
This year’s line-up features two young women who gained notice even in their student days at Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA, 國立臺北藝術大學) before launching professional careers abroad, and a Frenchman who started off studying medicine before turning to theater and dance.
NTCH staffer Wang Chiung-ying (王瓊英) said when planning for the series got underway two years ago, the idea had been to focus on female choreographers that would be new to National Theater audiences, even if their works had been seen elsewhere in Taiwan.
photo Courtesy of National Theater Concert Hall
However, given the scheduling conflicts, the decision was made to commission Lin Su-lien(林素蓮) and Lee Chen-wei (李貞葳) to create new works for the program and then invited French choreographer David Wampach.
‘NO MAN’S LAND’
The series opens tonight at the Experimental Theater with Lin's No Man’s Land (福吉三街), an unusual work set on eight non-dancers, who range in age from eight to 57.
photo Courtesy of National Theater Concert Hall
Lin said professional dancers are very good and beautiful, but she has often felt “untouched” by their performances compared to those by trained actors, raising the question about what is beautiful and what is ugly.
She said she was not interested in seeking perfection, but what is “real,” and that No Man’s Land seeks to tell the stories of everyday life.
Lee’s duet, Together Alone (孤單在一起), which opens on June 3, was created with Hungarian dancer and actor Vakulya Zoltan, who graduated from the SEAD Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in 2008, the same year Lee earned her bachelor’s degree at TNUA.
It could be Lee’s reputation, or it could be the photographs of the nude couple, but whatever it is, dance fans flocked to buy tickets for Together Alone’s four shows, which sold out weeks ago.
‘URGE’
However, there are still tickets remaining for Wampach’s Urge (如飢似渴), which had its world premiere in June of last year.
Having seen the trailer and read his description of the piece, which is set on six dancers, I can understand the possible reluctance to commit to a show about cannibalism, even though it is symbolic.
Wampach said symbolic cannibalism pervades human relations: the ingesting, incarnating, eating with the eyes, absorbing the vital essence of the other.
“I wanted to compose a dance that engages with the obscure and tormented dimensions of the body, which are often left untreated, but which nonetheless articulate what is for me at the center of theatrical representation, the tension between that which can be shown and that which can be seen,” he said in the description to a videoclip of the show.
Urge opens on Thursday, June 9 for four shows.
This story has been amended since first publish to correct the spelling of Lin Su-lien's name.
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