The Kaohsiung City Ballet (KCB, 高雄城市芭蕾舞團) has gone back to the classics for this year's tour. Not the Western ballet canon, but a classic of Chinese literature: The Peony Pavilion, Mudanting (牡丹亭).
Mudanting is the love story of Du Li-niang (杜麗娘), the daughter of a top official, who falls in love with a man she meets in a dream and then pines away when she is unable to recapture the enchantment of that dream. There is a happy ending, but not before facing ghosts, a trip to hell, life-risking adventure and all the other good elements of a romance.
Mudanting was and remains the most popular of Ming Dynasty plays. Popular as a Chinese opera, it has also been an inspiration for countless painters and poets.
Photo: courtesy of Kaohsiung City Ballet
It was the inspiration for two contemporary dance programs in Taipei this year, including one by dancer/choreographer Lin Hsiang-hsiu (林向秀). Lin also worked as a choreographer on the KCB ballet, which is touring the country this month and next.
Lin was responsible for all the duets between the main character Du Li-niang (杜麗娘) and her lover, as well as some of the solos. Even though Lin is a disciple of the Jose Limon technique, she has a strong grounding in ballet. She said she stuck to the classical technique, though with a twist.
"Some of the lifts may look like they are straight out of Giselle or Swan Lake, but there is a shift - a flexing of a foot or a hand, so it's a little different. There is one where the dancer wraps her foot like a hook around her partner's neck that is more like something you would see in ice skating," Lin said.
"Each main character has a signature musical theme that the composer gave them, and in my choreography they each have a signature movement," Lin said.
"The ballet is very true to Mudanting. The artistic director, KCB founder Chang Hsiu-ru (張秀如), really wants the audience to know the story through dance," Lin said.
"[Chang] had a very clear idea of what she wanted, the format of the show and what the story was to be. We all met so many times before we actually started to work on the show," Lin said.
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
RSS