There will be a lot of dancing this weekend in Taipei and New Taipei City, but the show that has been gathering a lot of attention is the Taiwan premiere of contemporary flamenco superstar Israel Galvan at the Cloud Gate Theater.
Glavan grew up immersed in flamenco. Both his father, Jose Galvan, who ran a dance academy in Seville, Spain, and his mother, Eugenia de Los Reyes, were bailaores (flamenco dancers), so it should be no surprise that Israel and sister Pastora followed in their parents’ footsteps.
He was a flamenco prodigy as a youngster, making his first appearance on stage — alongside his parents — at age two, but since making his professional debut in 1994, the 44-year-old has been awarded all the top flamenco prizes, including Spain’s National Dance Prize in 2008.
Photo Courtesy of Felix Vasquez
Hailed for his precision, power and complicated footwork, Israel Galvan has been compared to Rudolf Nureyev for the rawness of his power on stage, and to Fred Astaire for the airiness of his tapping.
Perhaps more unusually, he has also drawn a comparison to Jesus Christ and the Marquis of Sade — and that is from the Web site of the Spanish promotion company that represents him.
Like many of the world’s best dancers, he has sought to broaden the scope of his performances by drawing inspiration and techniques from other forms of dance and theater, including Pina Bausch, Butoh artist Kazuo Ohno and Michael Jackson, not to mention his 2014 collaboration, Torobaka, with Britain’s kathak/modern dance choreographer and dancer Akram Khan.
Photo Courtesy of Yi Production Dance Company
His experimentation with worlds outside of traditional flamenco has not been without controversy, including 1998’s The Red Shoes or his 2013 tribute to victims of the Holocaust, Lo Real (The Reel).
Galvan will perform his award-winning “solo” show La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), solo in the sense that he is the sole dancer. He will be accompanied — and inspired — by two brothers, singer David Lagos and guitarist Alfredo Lagos.
With La Edad de Oro, Galvan reduced flamenco to its core essentials — the Golden Age of Flamenco usually refers to the period from the very late 1800s to the 1930s, when the focus was on the dancing and singing — and added his hallmark of frenetic movement combined with sharp stillness and silence.
At the Experimental Theater in Taipei there will be another debut, this one by the fledgling Yi Production Dance Company (易製作).
The company was founded by two professors from the dance department at Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA, 國立臺北藝術大學) — dancer/choreographer Wu Yi-san (吳易珊) and lighting designer Goh Boon-ann (吳文安) — along with producer Sun Mei-hue (孫美惠).
Deviate (易色) is the troupe’s first production and was inspired by Alan Lightman’s novel Einstein’s Dreams, as well as the choreographers’ and dancers’own experiences.
Deviate is a double bill of two pieces: Yi se (易色), choreographed by Wu and performed by five dancers, and Yi xiang (易象), choreographed and performed by four dancers — Wu, Goh, Kuik Swee-boon (郭瑞文, the founder and artistic director of Singapore’s T.H.E.Dance Company), and Kuo Nai-yu (郭乃妤), a former dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company.
The company says the two pieces together create a dialogue about time and life from different points of view.
Also on this weekend at the Banqiao 435 Art Zone (板橋435藝文特區) in New Taipei City are the Mauvais Chausson Dance Theatre (壞鞋子舞蹈劇場) with See the Invisible (看見看不見的II─依地創作), with tickets priced at NT$600 and Alas (嗚呼哀哉) by the Assembly Dance Theatre (組合語言舞團) and The Double Theatre (複象公場), with tickets priced at NT$500.
Performance notes:
WHAT: La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age)
WHEN: Tomorrow at 8pm, Saturday and Sunday at 3pm
WHERE: Cloud Gate Theater (淡水雲門劇場), 36, Ln 6, Zhongzheng Rd Sec 1, Tamsui District, New Taipei City (新北市淡水區中正路一段6巷36號)
ADMISSION: NT$500 to NT$2,300, the only tickets left for the two matinees are in the NT$1,500 and NT$2,000 range; available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw or www.service@cloudgate.org.tw, at convenience store kiosks nationwide and at the door
ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES: Sept. 22 at 7:30pm and Sept. 23 at 2:30pm at National Taichung Theater (臺中國家歌劇院大劇院). The first show is sold out, just a handful of NT$500 seats are left for the second show
WHAT: Deviate
WHEN: Tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30pm, Saturday and Sunday at 2:30pm
WHERE: Experimental Theater (國家實驗劇場), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
ADMISSION: Tickets are NT$800, available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com and convenience story ticket kiosks
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not