Dance for the body and the mind are on the program at the National Theater this weekend.
The dancers of Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker’s eponymous troupe will be bouncing off a wall on the main stage, playing with a giant hamster wheel and dancing under giant fanwheels, as the company brings its sports-infused VeRo to Taipei.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the Experimental Theater, the Tainan-based Scarecrow Contemporary Dance Company will be tackling more metaphysical challenges, with artistic director Luo Wen-jinn’s (羅文瑾) latest work, Abyss.
Photo Courtesy of Deborah Colker Dance Company
FRENETIC DANCE
Colker, who founded her company in 1994, has built her reputation on the vigorous athleticism of her choreography, her use of sports metaphors and challenging the conventional notions of spacial relationships, dimensions and gravity.
It is no surprise to learn that in addition to creating works for her own troupe, she choreographed OVO for the Cirque du Soleil or that Brazil turned to her to choreograph the performance for the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics last year.
Photo Courtesy of Wu Chen-hsuan
She is also known for revisiting previous works and combining segments from them to create new productions, as she did with last year’s VeRo, for which she took parts of Velox (1975) and Rota (1997), both of which were major hits.
The latter featured the large spinning wheel, while the former saw the dancers scaling a 7m wall; both used sports and everyday movements, combined with techniques from ballet and contemporary dance, to explore space and movement and defy gravity.
VerRo was brought to Taipei as part of this year’s CTBC Arts Festival (新舞臺藝術節).
Photo Courtesy of Wu Chen-hsuan
STEPPING INTO THE ABYSS
While Colker’s choreography often conveys a lighter-than-air feeling, Luo was inspired by some very weighty German tomes for her latest production: Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil as well as Hermann Hesse’s Demian.
The thread linking the three is self-exploration. Luo cites a Hesse quote about walking “the knife-edge between two abysses … the uncrossable chasm between souls … and the unsoundable depths within” and Nietzsche’s idea of humans as “the rope hanging over the abyss” between animal and superman.
This is not the first time that Luo has chosen such big themes to explore; inspiration for previous works has come from Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino.
She uses dance to convey the evolution of mankind from animal instinct to the desire to become superhuman, with a set made up of scores of large rubber bands to represent Nietzsche’s ropes.
The six dancers, led by Luo herself and senior troupe member Li Peishan (李佩珊), will perform to an original “alternative rock” score by her frequent collaborators, singer Misa Wen (米莎) and Monlieng Lee (孟濂), who will be accompanied by percussionist Chang Yu-wei (張育瑋) and trombonist Wang Chi-kai (王麒愷).
Abyss runs 70-minutes with no intermission.
Elsewhere, the Century Contemporary Dance Company (世紀當代舞團) will be performing The Age Of Silence (破月) at the National Taiwan University of Arts Performance Hall (國立台灣藝術大學演藝廳) in New Taipei City’s Banchiao District (板橋) tomorrow night and Saturday afternoon.
Tickets are priced from NT$800 to NT$1,200, available online through www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticket kiosks.
Performance notes
What: VeRo
When: Tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30pm, Saturday and Sunday at 2:30pm
Where: National Theater (國家戲劇院), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
Admission: NT$800 to NT$4,200, available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
What: Abyss
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: NT$500, available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
Adduitional performance: Nov. 3 to Nov. 5 at the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center (台南市立台南文化中心國際廳原生劇場), 332 Zhonghua E Rd (台南市中華東路3段332號); Dec. 1 and Dec. 2 at the Playhouse at the National Taichung Theater (臺中國家歌劇院大劇院), 101, Huilai Rd, Sec. 2, Situn District, Taichung City (臺中市西屯區惠來路二段101號); tickets NT$500 for Tainan, NT$300 for Taichung, available at the theaters’ box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
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
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located