Allen Yu (余能盛) loves the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. His passion for the 19th-century Russian composer, who created the scores for some of the best-loved ballets in the Western classical canon, is not surprising for a ballet dancer or choreographer, but Yu could almost be considered somewhat obsessed.
Not only has he used Tchaikovsky’s music for several productions for his Formosa Ballet troupe (福爾摩沙芭蕾舞團) — its previous incarnation as the Chamber Ballet Taipei (台北室內芭蕾舞團) — but for works he created when he was deputy ballet director and choreographer at the Graz Opera House in Austria, many of the pieces he has produced in Taiwan have told about the composer’s life or his personal struggles, such as Romance — The Music and The Destiny of Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky — None But the Lonely Heart and When Ballet Meets Tchaikovsky.
After last year’s meditation on war, mankind and Mother Nature, Lost Illusion (失落的幻影), Yu has returned to his favorite subject with this year’s production, About Tchaikovsky (關於柴可夫斯基), which premieres in Tainan tomorrow night before starting a four-city tour.
Photo courtesy of Sandy Ouyang
He has also brought back two of his favorite guest artists, the Romanian couple Christina Dijmaru and Bogdan Canila, who are both principal dancers with the Bucharest National Opera Ballet.
Taiwanese Chiu Chu-en (邱主恩), who was so impressive in last year’s show is also back as a soloist, as is the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (長榮交響樂團).
Yu centered this year’s production on two of Tchaikovsky works: the String Sextet in D minor, Op. 70, also known as Souvenir de Florence and Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36.
Yu said the first section of About Tchaikovsky is a love story, inspired by the composer’s love of Florence, the city where he not only worked on the string sextet, but where he composed the opera The Queen of Spades.
For this section, Yu based his storyline on Tchaikovsky’s 13-year relationship — by letters only — withy a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, who became his patron.
The second half of the show, set to the symphony, focuses on what Yu said was one of the unhappiest times in Tchaikovsky’s life following his disastrous and short-lived marriage to a former student, Antonina Miliukova.
However, for his the storyline Yu drew on another famous Russian, the poet and author Alexander Pushkin, who was a major influence on Tchaikovsky, and the convoluted love affairs and passions of Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin and his short story The Queen of Spades.
■ Tomorrow at 7:30pm, Sunday at 3pm at the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center Performance Hall (台南市立文化中心演藝廳), 332, Jhonghua E Rd Sec 3, Tainan (台南市中華東路三段332號)
■ Remaining tickets are NT$400 to NT$1,600; available online at www.artsticket.com, at convenience store ticket kiosks and at the door
■ Additional performances: Wednesday at 7:30pm at Kaohsiung Chihteh Hall (高雄至德堂), 67 Wufu 1st Rd, Kaohsiung (高雄市五福一路67號); Saturday at 7:30pm at Taichung Chungshan Hall (台中市中山堂), 98 Syueshih Rd, Taichung (台中市學士路98號); Aug. 21 at 7:30pm at the Performance Hall of the Hsinchu County Cultural Affairs Bureau (新竹縣文化局演藝廳), 146 Siancheng 9th Rd, Jhubei City, Hsinchu County (新竹縣竹北市縣政九路146號) and Aug. 23 and 24 at 7:30pm, Aug. 25 at 3pm at the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Center (臺灣戲曲中心小表演廳), 51 Wenlin Rd (台北士林區文林路751號).
■ The Kaohsiung show is sold out. The only seats left for the Taichung show are NT$400, for Hsinchu and Taipei shows, the tickets range from NT$400 to NT$2,000; available online at www.artsticket.com and at convenience store ticket kiosks
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
Fifty-five years ago, a .25-caliber Beretta fired in the revolving door of New York’s Plaza Hotel set Taiwan on an unexpected path to democracy. As Chinese military incursions intensify today, a new documentary, When the Spring Rain Falls (春雨424), revisits that 1970 assassination attempt on then-vice premier Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). Director Sylvia Feng (馮賢賢) raises the question Taiwan faces under existential threat: “How do we safeguard our fragile democracy and precious freedom?” ASSASSINATION After its retreat to Taiwan in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) imposed a ruthless military rule, crushing democratic aspirations and kidnapping dissidents from
Fundamentally, this Saturday’s recall vote on 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers is a democratic battle of wills between hardcore supporters of Taiwan sovereignty and the KMT incumbents’ core supporters. The recall campaigners have a key asset: clarity of purpose. Stripped to the core, their mission is to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They understand a basic truth, the CCP is — in their own words — at war with Taiwan and Western democracies. Their “unrestricted warfare” campaign to undermine and destroy Taiwan from within is explicit, while simultaneously conducting rehearsals almost daily for invasion,
RSS