Next week’s performance of Moon River (月球水) at the National Theater is shaping up to be something of a “dance-off” between one of the top contemporary dance troupes in Taipei and one from Tokyo. Judging from the video clips on YouTube, it also looks like a whole lot of fun for dancers and audiences alike.
Under the leadership of founder Ping Heng (平珩), Dance Forum Taipei (舞蹈空間舞蹈團) has become known over the past two decades for collaborative, innovative work. Ping has frequently created shows by pairing a foreign choreographer’s work with that of a Taiwanese. This time, however, she turned things completely over to dynamic Japanese dancer-choreographer Ryohei Kondo, founder of the 14-year-old, all-male troupe Condors.
Kondo has developed a reputation for works that skillfully weave dance, comedy, theater, live music, multimedia imagery, puppetry and storytelling. There is also a lot of slapstick — after all, this is a group of men, of all shapes and sizes, and not all of them are dancers. After a Condors performance at the Japan Society in New York, the Village Voice critic called them “the Japanese Monty Python” — an image I’m still trying to come to grips with since grace and speed are not among my memories of John Cleese and company. Maybe it’s because the Condors are famous for not taking themselves too seriously.
Ping invited the Condors to perform in Taipei in 2002 for the Little Asia Dance Exchange Network, which turned out to be memorable for everyone involved because Typhoon Nari had flooded large parts of Taipei, including the basement-level Crown Theater
(皇冠藝術中心小劇場).
In an e-mail interview, Peng said the Condors impressed people with their dramatic style, energy and adaptability. Since the theater was out-of-bounds, they performed in the building’s lobby. She said she had wanted to do a project with them ever since.
“We talked about this project through my agent friend in Japan, Mayumi Nagatoshi, whom I’ve known for 25 years ... It became a reality when we confirmed the dates with [the] National Theater last spring,” Peng said, adding that the Condors came to Taipei in April and last month, while her company went to Japan in April for 10 days.
Even with such a short rehearsal period, Kondo was apparently not at a loss for ideas, ending up with 120 minutes’ worth of material.
“We will condense [it] into 90 minutes for the final show. It’s one dance with 21 sections, some are dance, some are more dramatic, but all of them are beautiful and full of surprises,” Ping said.
The Condors are a 13-man troupe, but only seven will be dancing in Taipei, including Kondo, alongside Dance Forum’s 10 dancers. For more than half the show, the two troupes will be performing together.
“They are aged from 36 to 46, we are 23 to 33, so it will be a nice mix of generations. We all learned so much from each other,” Ping said, adding that she really likes the way Kondo’s troupe tries to localize their shows when they are traveling.
As for what Moon River is all about, Kondo’s program notes say it best.
“When we were little, there were no mobile phones. Nor flat screen TVs. Yet we had dreams; like a dream someday we would make a trip into space. Now, thanks to the Internet, we can easily learn almost everything and do shopping online. But we no longer dream of space travel. I feel the dreams we used to dream years ago were grand and joyful. Moon River is full of such hopeful wishes,” he wrote.
“All the members of the Taipei team are masters of yoga who love the body. On the other hand, the members of Condors have stiff bodies and are not so young. But we know how to drink beer and how to entertain people,” Kondo wrote.
There you have it: space travel, the Moon, dreams, yoga and beer. Add in the video clip images of a woman “body surfing” on a giant plastic bubble, incredibly fast-moving Japanese dancers almost attacking the floor and another woman being passed along over a line of bodies — a la Pina Bausch’s Masurca Fogo, only she’s not being passed from hand to hand, she’s cartwheeling slowly from one raised foot to another. Mix it all together and you get — well, we’ll have to wait a week to see the results.
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