Watching Sheu Fang-yi (許芳宜) is like watching a force of nature. Onstage she is a mass of contradictions: fierce, tender, ephemeral, steadfast, poetic, earthy, fragile, incredibly strong, small but able to make her legs look extra long.
Watching Sheu was what LAFA's (拉芳) 37 Arts production was all about, with choreography that catered to her strengths and charisma. But while it was Sheu who drew the audiences that packed all four performances of LAFA's inaugural season at Novel Hall from Jan. 17 to Jan. 19, the company that she and long-time partner Bulareyaung Pagarlava (Bula, 布拉瑞揚) have formed more than delivered on their promise of a new force in Taiwan's dance world.
Choreographer Sang Ji-jyia's (桑吉加) 10-minute The Duet, set to music by Ryoji Iked, quietly set the pace for the evening. His spare, stripped-down moves made the most of Sheu and partner Chou Shu-yi's (周書毅, of MDans) easy articulation. Chou is always enjoyable to watch and he more than held his own with Sheu.
PHOTO COURTESY OF LAFA
The second piece was a study in black and white, a solo for Sheu from Bula's 2002 The Single Room. Clad in a sheer black negligee-like shift, Sheu approaches her partner, a long table that sits center stage. She dances around it, against it, with it, on it and under it, back-lit for the most part so that it is her silhouette that you are watching, a graceful shadow against an immovable object.
At times the table acts as a ballet bar; other times it is more substantial, as she half lays upon it. She appears incredibly fragile, but that fragility is belied by the strength needed to maintain her balance.
The solo is one of Bula's most balletic pieces and it was a complete contrast to the final work on the program, 37 Arts, a one-two punch that demonstrated his growth as a choreographer.
Once again the table takes center stage as 37 Arts opens, only this time there are three chairs around it. Two young men, clad in huge oversized white T-shirts, take their seats, followed by a similarly clad Sheu. What follows is a rollicking Keystone Cops silent movie battle for a white bottle, first done fast, then repeated in slow motion as if lit by a strobe, all set to a cancan score. Eyes bulge, hair gets pulled, the audience gets the giggles.
Then Huang Ming-cheng (黃明正) enters, clad only in black bathing trunks, and performs a series of acrobatic feats that leaves the audience both cheering and eating out of his hand: handstands, hoop jumps and rope tricks, is there nothing this man can't do?
The slap-stick pace is maintained through the next sequence, set to I love Paris. But before you know it the pace and the mood have shifted. The friendly acrobat has become a menacing figure in a dark duet with Sheu as he grabs her hair, her T-shirt, picks her up and tosses her about.
Huang spins Sheu around much like an adult would play airplane with a child, her body parallel to the ground. But since he is holding only cloth, you find yourself hoping that the material will hold through another performance. They swirl like ice skaters, but there's a sickening edge to the movements. In the end, Sheu, her hair hanging down over her face, twitches and moves like a broken doll. No one is laughing now, the audience sits in dead silence.
Then the curtain is raised, the table is back, and all four dancers come out with their costumes turned into modified clown outfits for a cancan reprise and smiles all around. It was a powerful performance, and a reminder how good Bula is at evoking strong emotions both onstage and among the audience.
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
A dozen excited 10-year-olds are bouncing in their chairs. The small classroom’s walls are lined with racks of wetsuits and water equipment, and decorated with posters of turtles. But the students’ eyes are trained on their teacher, Tseng Ching-ming, describing the currents and sea conditions at nearby Banana Bay, where they’ll soon be going. “Today you have one mission: to take off your equipment and float in the water,” he says. Some of the kids grin, nervously. They don’t know it, but the students from Kenting-Eluan elementary school on Taiwan’s southernmost point, are rare among their peers and predecessors. Despite most of
A pig’s head sits atop a shelf, tufts of blonde hair sprouting from its taut scalp. Opposite, its chalky, wrinkled heart glows red in a bubbling vat of liquid, locks of thick dark hair and teeth scattered below. A giant screen shows the pig draped in a hospital gown. Is it dead? A surgeon inserts human teeth implants, then hair implants — beautifying the horrifyingly human-like animal. Chang Chen-shen (張辰申) calls Incarnation Project: Deviation Lovers “a satirical self-criticism, a critique on the fact that throughout our lives we’ve been instilled with ideas and things that don’t belong to us.” Chang
Feb. 10 to Feb. 16 More than three decades after penning the iconic High Green Mountains (高山青), a frail Teng Yu-ping (鄧禹平) finally visited the verdant peaks and blue streams of Alishan described in the lyrics. Often mistaken as an indigenous folk song, it was actually created in 1949 by Chinese filmmakers while shooting a scene for the movie Happenings in Alishan (阿里山風雲) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), recounts director Chang Ying (張英) in the 1999 book, Chang Ying’s Contributions to Taiwanese Cinema and Theater (打鑼三響包得行: 張英對台灣影劇的貢獻). The team was meant to return to China after filming, but
RSS