It is not often that a local dance company gets to restage one of its original productions, a situation that reflects both market forces and the government’s cultural subsidy system. This is a great loss, both for audiences and a company’s performers because it robs them of a chance to revisit a work and have new dancers tackle the roles.
Building a repertoire is crucial for a company’s development and something that Tainan-born choreographer Allen Yu (余能盛) feels very strongly about.
“Taiwanese are always throwing things away ... you need a repertoire for dancers and the public. Some of my pieces are in the repertories [of companies] in Germany, the Czech Republic, but no other company keeps a repertoire in Taiwan outside of Cloud Gate [Dance Theater (雲門舞集)],” Yu said in a telephone interview last week.
Photo Courtesy of Sandy Ouyang
So Yu jumped at the chance to revise one of his works for the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center, which named Yu its first artistic director last year.
The center wanted him to do a big ballet this year, but he told them he did not have the time to create two new ballets, having organized the Museum Night, Opera Highlights (博物館之夜‧歌劇選粹) concerts in June for the Tainan Arts Festival and the Chimei Museum, which included two short dances.
So center officials picked Yu’s 2010 production, The Door (門), for the Chamber Ballet Taipei (台北室內芭蕾), which was renamed Formosa Ballet (福爾摩沙芭蕾舞團) last year.
Photo Courtesy of Sandy Ouyang
Yu said reviving The Door gave him a chance to “clean it up” and expand the cast to 30 dancers, including a larger contingent of males.
“It is one of my personal favorites of the about 30 big ballets that I have done so far,” he said. “I’m still not 100 percent satisfied, I can’t say that, but I’m happy. I really enjoy doing this piece.”
Yu brought back dancers Bogdan Canila and Cristina Dijmaru, soloists with the Bucharest National Opera Ballet who were so memorable in Yu’s 2013 Swan Lake, for the leading roles.
“Christine, she is great. She is younger than Nadja Saidakova from Deutsch Oper Berlin [who starred in the 2010 show], who was in her 40s, so I changed the choreography in the solo for her. Christine has beautiful technique, beautiful feet. She got married last year, I told her she is now different, really a woman,” Yu said.
One of the hallmarks of Yu’s productions is the use of live music. The Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (長榮交響樂團) will be led by German conductor Gernot Schmalfuss, but Yu warned that audiences this weekend will not enjoy the full effect of the music — Italian composer Nino Rota’s La Strada suite and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances — because the New Taipei City Arts Center’s theater is so small.
“With a double timpani and a piano, the space is so tight, so we had to go with a smaller, upright piano [instead of a grand piano]. However, the Hsinchu and Tainan theaters have more space,” Yu said. “I hope next year I can get a bigger place in Taipei to do a show.”
A two-act ballet, divided by both the extremely different scores and styles of choreography, The Door is about the doorways of our lives and what they lead to: jobs, love, tragedy, happiness. They serve as the turning points that frame our lives.
A collection of 12 large moveable door frames make up the starkly simple set, their strong clean lines providing a visual and a physical counterpoint to the dancers’ pliable bodies.
Performance notes
WHAT: The Door
WHEN: Tomorrow at 7:30pm, Sunday at 3pm
WHERE: New Taipei City Arts Center (新北市藝文中心演藝廳), 62 Jhuangjing Rd, Banciao District, New Taipei City (新北市板橋區莊敬路62號)
ADMISSION: NT$400 to NT$2,000; tickets available online at www.artsticket.com.tw, convenience store ticketing kiosks and at the door
ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES: Tuesday at 7:30pm at the Performance Hall of the Hsinchu County Cultural Affairs Bureau (新竹縣文化局演藝廳), 146 Siancheng 9th Rd, Jhubei City, Hsinchu County (新竹縣竹北市縣政九路146號); Aug. 13 at 7:30pm at the Taichung Chungshan Hall (台中中山堂), 98 Hsuehshi Rd, Taichung City (台中市學士路98號); and Aug. 20 at 7:30 and Aug. 21 at 3pm at the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center (臺南文化中心演藝廳), 332, Chunghua East Rd Sec 3, Greater Tainan (臺南市中華東路3段332號). Ticket prices and purchase points as above.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
RSS