Dance students, professionals and fans will have an interesting array of workshops and performances in the program that choreographer Ku Ming-shen (古名伸) and her team have put together for this year’s·i.dance Taipei (IDT).
However, while the focus is on movement, especially dance improvisation — hence the “i” — the festival is also about musicians working with sound and collaboration.
Improvisational dance is not about doing whatever you feel like in the moment, but about being interconnected, watching and listening.
Photo courtesy of Ku and Dancers
“I-dance Taipei” features a dozen workshops, a roundtable discussion, an open jam and five nights of performances under the banner “Spectrum of Dance Improvisation.”
The guest artists and performances come from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the UK, the US and Germany.
They include German choreographer/dancer Henrietta Horn; Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser, who both teach and choreograph at Smith College in Massachusetts; Taiwanese dancer/choreographer Kao Peiling (高沛齡), who teaches at the University of Hawaii and her movement and sound improvisation collective electroViolet (紫色電流); Victor Ma (馬才和) and Mandy Yim (嚴明然), cofounders of Y-SPACE (多空間) in Hong Kong; UK-based artist and researcher Thomas Kampe; San Francisco-based sound artist Jorge Bachman; German composer Thomas Neuhaus, and musicians Nelson Hiu (邱立信) and Edmund Leung (梁卓?).
The workshops will be held at Art Space 71, 71 Kaiming St, Beitou District, Taipei City (台北市北投區開明街71號), the converted elementary school in Beitou that is home to Ku & Dancers (古舞團) and several other dance and theater companies, while the performances will be at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park’s Song Yan Creative LAB in East Building 2F (松山文創園區 — 東向製菸工廠2樓).
The five shows will feature a changing line-up of performers; tickets are NT$800 per show; the “all you can watch personal pass” is sold out.
The workshops cost NT$1,200 per class and advance registration is required, which can be made online (docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSenmS9iADVtBpDd8DHV5QXgxaE_vaMCWHwVwJCi9KPFKw9yyQ/viewform).
A full rundown of events and links to registration and tickets is available on the festival Web site in Chinese and English (idancetaipei.tw).
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