Having grown up in a rural village in Ilan County, dancer/choreographer You Shao-ching
Last year, she realized her dream by setting up the White Dance Temple (
In the first dance performance combining puppet theater and contemporary dance, four performers will dance in sync with puppets on their hands in a Taiwanese interpretation of Franz Schubert's Winterreise. This is meant literally because the only language to be heard during the performance will be Taiwanese. Wilhelm Muller's poetry, for which Schubert composed the music, has been rewritten to accompany the performance.
You was inspired by a dream she had. In an all-white colored dream, the traveller in the poem meanders in a snowstorm shedding white tears. "He keeps looking at me over his shoulders and tells me again and again to look for love in the world," You said.
Trained in and still a member of the yoga-and-tai chi influenced Taipei Dance Circle, You created the piece with a flow of imageries, which are carried out smoothly by the energetic and expressive body movements of the performers. Although dancing with puppets in hand is not easy, the performers, including Huang Wu-shan (黃武山), a puppet performer with the renowned I Wan Jan Puppet Theater (亦宛然掌中劇團), performed the delicate movements with reasonable ease.
"If you see puppeteers backstage, they are actually moving like dancers. Dancing and puppet-performing have much in common. You have to transmit the feelings from every part of your body onto the puppet to bring it to life, to give it emotion. Therefore, puppeteering employs more than hands," You said.
White Roars will be performed at 7:30 tonight and 2:30 and 7:30 tomorrow at the Forum Auditorium, 4, Lane 187, Minzu W. Rd. (
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