The Bulareyaung Dance Company (BDC, 布拉瑞揚舞團) returns to New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) next week for the world premiere of founder Bulareyaung (Bula) Pagarlava’s newest work, Colors (漂亮漂亮).
The two-year-old Taitung-based company has had a busy year, with two world premieres — Qaciljay (阿棲睞) at the National Theater in May as part of the annual “1+1” double bill Ku Ming-shen’s (古名伸) Sadhu (沙度) and now Colors — a trip to Hong Kong and some small shows around Taitung.
However, the troupe faced a major, almost devastating, challenge when its studio in the old Taitung Sugar Factory was hit hard, like many other places in Taitung city and county, by Typhoon Nepartak in July.
photo courtesy of Li Jia-ye
The typhoon ripped open huge holes in the building’s roof, allowing the rain to pour onto the wooden dance floor and the office area, and leaving the rest of the roof at risk of collapsing. A plastic tarp had to be stretched over the roof until more permanent repairs could be made.
The damage caused by Nepartak would have been hard for even an older, more established troupe to recover from. Help came in the form of an open letter from Bula’s mentor and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) that was widely published in the Chinese-language press, encouraging dance fans and other Taiwanese to help the company rebuild. Money and help poured in.
However, with its studio temporarily out of commission, Bula had to seek alternative rehearsal spaces.
One of the initial ideas behind Colors was to make something more colorful than Bula’s other works for BDC; another was to explore the differences between Aborigines from the mountains, including Paiwans like Bula, and those who live closer to the sea, like the Amis in Hualien. A third was to work out how each dancer saw and defined beauty.
“Maybe the typhoon was good for us,” Bula said in a telephone interview. “It came just two weeks after we started rehearsals for Colors and it forced us to think in new ways.”
He decided to use the beaches near Taitung as rehearsal space. The idea was for the dancers to use the movements he had come up with to move in the water, since the ocean was a key theme for the work.
It didn’t work that way.
“When you jump in the ocean, you can’t really move because the waves push you around,” Bula quipped. “We wanted to connect with the ocean, but it is hard to replicate in the studio how you move in water.”
Colors is set on seven dancers: three Paiwan, three Han and one Amis. It comes with a parental warning that there will be some nudity, but “nothing erotic.”
As usual with performances at the Cloud Gate Theater, the theater has arranged for shuttle buses from the Tamsui MRT station, which leave one hour before each performance and then return after the show.
However, reservations must be made in advance, either through Cloud Gate Dance Company’s Web site or by phone (02-2629-8558, extension 3404) by Monday.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist