It is not always easy finding the right dance partner, but when the partnership works, it is a joy to behold.
Taiwanese audiences have been lucky that Dance Forum Taipei (舞蹈空間) and Spanish choreographer Marina Mascarell work so well together, and that founder Ping Heng (平珩) has developed such a rapport over the years with European producers, including Korzo Theater, an arts center in The Hague that is one of the largest production houses for modern dance in the Netherlands.
The result has been several great shows, going back to Mascarell first creation for the troupe, 2010’s Like an Olive Tree. That was a year before Mascarell, who began choreographing while still a dancer with the Nederlands Dans Theater 1, turned freelance choreographer and became a resident artist at Korzo.
Photo: Courtesy of Chen You-wei
Since then, Taipei audiences have been treated to 2013’s The Unreality of Time (時境) and It is like a large animal deep in sleep (沉睡的巨獸) in 2015, which were also performed at Korzo’s CaDance Festival in those years.
Mascarell has gone on to create works for companies as varied as the Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Kannon Dance Saint Petersburg, the Goteborgs Opera Dance Company and Le Ballet de l’Opera de Lyon.
Her works are challenging for both performers and viewers, mentally stimulating yet always enjoyable — not an easy combination to achieve. She won the BNG Bank Dance Award for Excellent Talent in 2015 and last year was nominated for the Prize of the Dutch Dance Festival.
Photo: Courtesy of Chen You-wei
Tonight, Dance Forum begins a five-show run of Mascarell’s latest work, Three Times Rebel, at the Wellspring Theater in Taipei’s Gongguan District (公館).
The piece premiered on Jan. 27 at the CaDance Festival with a smaller cast of five, including Taiwan’s Lee Chen-wei (李貞葳), who has been freelancing in Europe for the past two years.
Live music was performed by Netherlands-based Spanish composer and performer Yamila Rios, who worked with Mascarell on It is like a large animal deep in sleep, including the shows at Huashan 1914 Culture Park.
For the Taipei shows, Mascarell has expanded the cast to seven dancers, plus Rios on cello.
In Three Times Rebel, Mascarell tackles the history of women’s emancipation and the issues of gender inequality, prejudice and misogynistic violence.
Ping said Mascarell spent more than a year researching the project.
“She did a lot of reading, and then did interviews and then she did more research,” Ping said.
The program notes include Mascarell’s reading list, which included Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics by Seyla Benhabib, The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Naomi Wolf’s Vagina and Adrienne Rich’s Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations — not easy reading by any means.
Among the Dutch reviews of Three Times Rebel was praise for its “fierce, almost activist performance.”
For the set, Mascarell links the dancers to a metal frame that can bend and sway with them, though they also must bend and move to conform to the frame’s shape, a metaphor for the pigeonholing that females all too often confront throughout their lives.
She included some text from Plath and Virginia Wolfe in the show, which runs about 60 minutes and comes with a warning about nudity. There will be post-show question-and-answer sessions tomorrow, Saturday night and the Sunday matinee.
Three Times Rebel was coproduced by Korzo productions, Nederlands Dans Theater, Mercat de les Flors Dance House and Dance Forum Taipei, with support from the Municipality of The Hague, the Performing Arts Fund NL and Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.
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