The New Taipei City-based Bare Feet Dance Theatre (壞鞋子舞蹈劇場), formerly known in English as Mauvais Chausson Dance Theatre, will perform An Eternity Before and After (渺生) at the National Experimental Theater in Taipei this weekend.
The bare-feet name is a tribute to late 19th and early-20th century American dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, who famously tossed out her ballet shoes and corsets to choreograph works made to be danced in bare feet.
Lin I-chin (林宜瑾), company founder, artistic director and choreographer, said that she wanted to break away from “regulated modern body and bordered artistic forms” to discover the relationship between the body and the geography of Taiwan.
Photo courtesy of Bare Feet Dance Theatre
An Eternity Before and After is a work that Lin and her dancers developed during the Taipei Performing Arts Center’s Creative Program Pre-show Project in 2017.
Like Lin’s 2016 work, The End of the Rainbow (彩虹的盡頭), which I was impressed by when I saw it in November last year, it is inspired by Taiwanese “burial songs.”
Energy Cycles
The company says that using a song for the deceased as the only kinetic energy for spiraling motions, two dancers build and accumulate energy before it is reduced, and weakened into another cycle — interdependent, yet independent of one another.
The aim of the spiral trajectories is to expose the vulnerability of the flesh and body, and the minute existence of humans, the program notes say.
The work was developed in cooperation with new media artist Chuang Chih-wei (莊志維), who as of January is one of the National Taichung Theater’s four artists-in-residence.
Chuang, who has gained fame for his interactive installations of light and space, has created an installation for the program, which the dancers — Panay Pan, Fangas Nayaw, Pong Tzu-ling (彭子玲) and Liu Chun-tu (劉俊德) — will interact with.
The music was composed by Lee Tzu-mei (李慈湄), with costumes by Erichoalic (蔡浩天) and lighting by Lan Ching-ting (藍靖婷).
■ National Experimental Theater (國家戲劇院實驗劇場), 21-1 Zhongshan N Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號) tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm
■ Tickets are NT$800, available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
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