Bargain-hunter alert: the Council of Cultural Affairs is offering the deal of the decade! For anyone who has felt that tickets to performances were too expensive, Dance Forum Taipei (舞蹈空間舞蹈團) — one of just a handful of professional dance companies in the country — will be performing two brand-new works at Taipei’s Novel Hall on Thursday and next Friday, and the tickets are just NT$200 and NT$300.
That’s not just a bargain; it’s a steal, considering that tickets for the company’s last two shows — at the National Theater in June and at Novel Hall a year ago — were priced between NT$400 and NT1,500. The best deals, however, went to the early birds who snapped up the NT$100 tickets.
How can the company afford to perform at such prices?
Photo: Courtesy of Dance Forum Taipei
“It’s the Council of Cultural Affairs Festival of Art and Technology, it’s all related to new media. We’re the opening program and all the money goes back to the government, that’s why the ticket prices are so low,” Dance Forum Taipei founder and director Ping Heng (平珩) said in a telephone interview last week.
She was thrilled that the NT$100 seats were gone by the beginning of the month, especially since the promotional materials were late. That’s what happens when a festival is organized by a committee — in this case by the council, Huashan 1914 Cultural and Creative Industry and the Taiwan Information Software Association.
“They asked us [to collaborate] in August and we thought it was a good idea because we might be able to attract a different audience, not just dance fans, but new technology people as well,” Ping said.
One of the reasons she jumped on board was the company’s plans to feature digital technology in its annual fall show, in works created by three foreign dancer-choreographers: Australians Lisa Griffiths and Adam Synnott and Spaniard Marina Mascarell Martinez.
“We started planning the show last year. We had been talking with Adam and Lisa since then. Adam is a dancer, choreographer and also does new media. Usually you need to work with two different artists, a choreographer and a new media person, but Adam can do both,” she said.
Asked how the company came to work with the two — who are both veterans of Melbourne’s famed Chunky Move (which is in Taipei next week as well) — Ping credited Asia Link, a center at the University of Melbourne that promotes social, cultural and political exchanges between Australia and its Asian neighbors.
“They have contacts with 40 or 50 groups. They used to send artists to the Artists Village ... and they are always recommending artists who have potential, who are up and coming. They recommended Lisa and Adam,” Ping said.
“As for Marina, when we performed in Amsterdam last year the promoter there recommended her. The promoter thinks there needs to be another Taiwanese company besides Cloud Gate [on the international circuit]. The promoter wanted to develop something based on our Eastern Promises,” she said. “First the promoter suggested a Brazilian choreographer, but we couldn’t work out the scheduling ... so the promoter then recommended some young choreographers, including Marina. We hadn’t worked with a female choreographer for a while, so I thought it would be good to try.”
Neither the company nor the choreographers had much time to develop the two works that make up the Long Take program, but Ping said Griffiths and Mascarell worked very hard.
“Lisa and Marina held workshops to get to know the dancers, their movements, and then they started to develop their pieces,” Ping said.
“Marina began by writing a whole story to explain the relationships between the characters — it was about six chapters — which helped the dancers develop their characters, since she only had four weeks to work with them,” she said.
Griffiths and Synnott have described their work, Element, as an examination of the elements or systems that make up the Earth as an organism: earth, water, fire and gravity, and the search for connections.
Mascarell, who has begun to make a name for herself as a choreographer in the past few years, continues to dance with the Nederlands Dans Theater. Her piece is titled Like an Olive Tree and takes its inspiration from a poem by Jorge Luis Borges.
Ping said Long Shot should run about 70 minutes.
The other three programs in the festival will be held at Huashan 1914 Creative Park or at the Taipei National University of the Arts Theater, and are also bargains.
The Italian interactive theater company TPO returns to Taipei for four shows of The Italian Garden (義大利的秘密花園) at Huashan on Nov. 12 and 13.
The Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鐵道之夜) is a multimedia musical adaptation of Kenji Miyazawa’s famed 1927 novel of the same title so beloved by anime and film directors. There will be four shows at the university in Guandu from Nov. 19 to Nov. 21.
The final program is Taipei’s own M.O.V.E. Theatre Group (動見体劇團) and its examination of war and conflict as seen through sports such as tug-of-war. 1-Love (1:0). Fitting that it comes just before election day on Nov. 24 and Nov. 25.
PERFORMANCE NOTES:
WHAT: Dance Forum Taipei, Long Take (長鏡頭)
WHEN: Nov. 4 and Nov. 5 at 7:45pm
WHERE: Novel Hall (新舞臺), 3-1 Songshou Rd, Taipei City (台北市松壽路3-1號)
ADMISSION: NT$200 and NT$300, available through the NTCH box office, online at www.arts.tickets.com and at the door
ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES
TPO, The Italian Garden (義大利的秘密花園)
— Nov. 12 (2:30pm and 7:30pm) and Nov. 13 (10:30am and 2:30pm)
— Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei (台北市八德路一段1號)
— Tickets are NT$300
Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鐵道之夜)
— Nov. 19 and Nov. 20 at 7:30pm and Nov. 20 and Nov. 21 at 2:30pm
— Taipei National University of the Arts Theater (國立臺北藝術大學展演藝術中心戲劇廳), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號)
— Tickets are NT$100 and NT$200
M.O.V.E. Theatre Group, 1-Love (1:0)
— Nov. 24 and Nov. 25 at 7:30pm.
— Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號)
— Tickets are NT$200
Tickets available through NTCH ticketing or online at www.artsticket.com.tw
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