Taiwan's leading choreographer Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) is launching Bamboo Dream (竹夢), his first new work for the new millennium. It will premier in Taipei on April 21.
It's a lyrical, poetic piece with dancers flitting through eight scenes representing the seasons and the elements: spring wind, summer clamor, winding path, autumn spirits, clearing after rain, midnight and winter snow. There is no story line, Lin says, and, humorously adds, "but I created a beautiful dance."
The clean lines of this abstract dance compares well to Lin's wildly popular 1998 Moon Water. The choreography for 2001 is no less beautiful, and the mood, from the first scene in a misty bamboo grove to the finale on a snow scape, is all very idyllic.
The 75-minute performance takes place on a stage decorated with nothing more than a simple bamboo grove. Dancers, 21 of them in total, will be dressed in loose white gowns with long sleeves to give a dream feel of being fairies shuttling back and forth among the bamboo.
Occasionally, dancers appear in costumes of red and black, the contrast with the understated background making a vivid visual impression.
Bamboo Dream, which in Mandarin is a homophone for "building dreams," is full of musicality. A woman in white plays a vertical Chinese flute on stage. This is accompanied by Eastern European music by Aruo Part. The whole package - the visual and auditory effects - creates an atmosphere of tranquility interspersed with physical movement.
To create its bamboo grove on stage, the dance company has planted bamboo, which will be three months old when seen in the theater. Several of the leading dancers in the company like Li Ching-chun (李靜君), Hsu Fang0yi (許芳宜), Wu Yi-fang (吳義芳), and Chou Chang-ling (周章伶) will have spectacular performance displaying a high level of technical skill.
Performance notes
What Bamboo Dream
Who Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集)
When & Where April 21, 22, 24-28, National Theater, Taipei (台北國家戲劇院); May 3 & 4, Taichung City Cultural Center, Chungshan Hall (台中中山堂); May 24 & 25, Kaohsiung City Cultural Center, Chih-der Hall, Kaohsiung (高雄文化中心至德堂).
Ticket 4/21-22, 4/28: NT$600-1800; 4/24-25. 4/27: NT$800-NT$1500, 4/26: NT$500-NT$1500, 5/3-5/4, 5/24-25: NT$300-1500
To order online: http://ticket.acer121.com; by phone: 02-2784-1111, 04-2255-1975, 07-238-3998.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
Artifacts found at archeological sites in France and Spain along the Bay of Biscay shoreline show that humans have been crafting tools from whale bones since more than 20,000 years ago, illustrating anew the resourcefulness of prehistoric people. The tools, primarily hunting implements such as projectile points, were fashioned from the bones of at least five species of large whales, the researchers said. Bones from sperm whales were the most abundant, followed by fin whales, gray whales, right or bowhead whales — two species indistinguishable with the analytical method used in the study — and blue whales. With seafaring capabilities by humans
RSS