The Century Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC, 世紀當代舞團) is hosting its third round Asia collaboration this weekend with Dance in Asia 2018 (2018驅動城市III 混亞洲) at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei.
The Taiwanese side of the production features works by several CCDC dancers, including Li Huei-wun (李蕙雯), Liu Jia-rui (劉家瑞) and Mou Tien-yun (莫天昀) as well as Chang Ya-yuan (張雅媛), who has danced with several local troupes and won national awards for previous works, and Lai You-feng (賴有豐).
Artists from the Japanese multi-media art collective off-Nibroll, which presented three sold-out shows of its own version of Dance in Asia 2018 in February in Osaka, Japan, are in Taipei, including Saori Yoneda and Mikuni Yanaihara.
Photo courtesy of Century Contemporary Dance Company
Freelancers Hwang Soo-hyun from South Korea and Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) from Malaysia round out the creative team
The idea behind this year’s project was to bring together artists from four cities —Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur — to “smash illusions” about the constraints facing Asian bodies, self-identity, family conflicts and the plurality of time, CCDC said.
It also hope that such cross-cultural programs, with Taipei as their center, will inspire ideas for future programs or dances.
There are two different programs: A, which features works, mostly solos, by Mou, Liu, Chang, Yanaihara and Huang; and B, which features works by Mou, Li, Lai, Yoneda and Hwang.
Program A will be performed tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 7:30pm, while B will be performed at both matinees tomorrow and on Sunday afternoon.
■ Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 7:30pm, tomorrow at 2:30pm and 5pm, and Sunday at 2:30pm
■ Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914), 2F Fruit Wine Building (果酒禮堂), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號)
■ Tickets are NT$800 or NT$1,500 for special sponsorship seats, available at NTCH box offices, Eslite bookstore ticket desks, online at www.artsticket.com.tw or at convenience store ticket kiosks
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
RSS