Renowned Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) will be this year’s recipient of the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the festival said on Wednesday.
Lin, founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集), will be the first award recipient who is based outside the US or Europe.
Founded in 1981, the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement’s first award recipient was renowned US choreographer Martha Graham.
Photo courtesy of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre
In its award announcement, the festival’s organizers described Lin as a choreographer who “often draw[s] inspiration from traditional elements of Asian culture and aesthetics” and said that “his choreographic brilliance continues to push boundaries and redefine the art form.”
This is not the first time that Lin has garnered praise from abroad.
Lin was listed as one of “Asia’s Heroes” by Time magazine in 2005 and honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Movimentos Dance Prize in Germany in 2009.
He was also the recipient of the 2006 John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award.
In addition, he received the Chevalier de l’ Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture in 2011.
Lin said it was an honor to be the first non-American, non-European recipient of the award.
“The award is not only for me; it is for the whole of Taiwanese society. We are thankful that Taiwanese society has supported Cloud Gate with accolades and practical means over the past 40 years,” he said, adding that it was with the endorsement and support of Taiwanese society that Cloud Gate could create dance works incessantly and was able to perform abroad.
Lin is scheduled to travel to the US in July to receive the award and US$50,000.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the