Having barely had time to unpack their suitcases after a month-long tour of China and Hong Kong Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) returns to the National Theater on Wednesday next week for the premiere of artistic director Lin Hwai-min’s (林懷民) latest works, White Water (白水) and Dust (微塵).
It has been a long time since Lin presented a double bill — eight years to be exact, since White X3 (白X3) and Formosa (美麗島) — having focused on full-length works in recent years.
Lin said he just wanted to do two works.
Photos Courtesy of Liu Chen-hsiang
“I think it started with Dust. I wanted to do Shostakovich [String Quartet No. 8], but it’s only 22 minutes, so it needed a pal,” he said. “They go on their own way. There is a huge contrast. White Water is black and white, very lyrical and then the Shostakovich. The sales department says it is like ‘lemonade and vodka.’”
String Quartet No. 8 is considered the most popular of Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich’s quartets, but it is certainly not a light piece. It was written over a three-day period in July 1960 while Shostakovich was visiting Dresden, in the then-East Germany, to score a film about the destruction of the city during World War II.
It was a difficult period in pianist-composer’s life. He had recently, under pressure, joined the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, something he had avoided doing for years, and he was beginning to suffer from problems with his right hand, a condition that would finally be diagnosed years later as a form of poliomyelitis.
Photo Courtesy of Liu Chen-hsiang
The quartet is austere, filled with portents of doom.
Lin said he bought a recording of the work more than a decade ago and has been thinking about using it for a while.
“It’s amazing thinking about it, it is too big. In recent years I have been so depressed by what’s going on — in Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, Kaohsiung and Sindien [the gas blasts in August] … it’s really remarkable this century. It is crowded with disasters.”
Photos Courtesy of Liu Chen-hsiang
He said he had done a lot of research about the work, about Shostakovich’s trip to East Germany, how the piece was dedicated to victims of war.
“After he wrote it, he wrote a letter to a friends that said it was unlikely that ‘anyone would write a string quartet after I die, so I wrote one,’” Lin said. “They say it is autobiographical.”
Lin said he was also inspired by Buddhism’s Diamond Sutra.
“I use this to hint that, confronting impermanence, human beings are insignificant and fragile like specks of dust,” he said.
Lin said the brevity of the quartet was a challenge and that he hated the “feeling that I had to do it.”
“So difficult, but I think I pulled it off,” he said.
As befitting a requiem and a reflection on mortality, Dust is dark and smoke shrouded.
‘White Water’
It is a good thing the program starts with the much lighter White Water.
For the first piece, Lin once again tapped his fascination with the substance that covers almost three-fourths of the Earth’s surface.
“I have used water in a lot of pieces. I live near the water. I am looking at Tamsui River outside my window right now,” he said. “Two things I love very much — clouds and water. They are changeable, unpredictable, like dance.”
He said that on one of his trips to Chihshang Township (池上), the inspiration for last year’s production, Rice (稻禾), he stopped off at Toroko Gorge on the way home. A few weeks later, Lin sent a photograph of the river that he had taken there to Ethan Wang (王奕盛), the video artist who worked with him on Rice and Listening to the River (聽河) in 2010, and asked if Wang if he could turn it into a black and white projection.
“He did it so beautifully. Just the water, no weeds, rocks,” Lin said.
Sitting next to Wang as he worked on his computer, Lin said they found a lot of interesting things as they played around with technology to create the visual setting for the new work. The graphic work also fit in with Lin’s feeling that human are using so much technology that they have forgotten what the real world looks like, how it feels.
“It [White Water] starts in color, a river in color, then becomes black and white, technology takes over, in blocks, triangles, squares, flowing, moving anti-clockwise, upside down and then at one point a green line enters,” Lin said.
“I put the dancers upstage, green lines and water projected on them. A lot of technical things are involved. At the end we do a rewind,” he said. “Reverse and rewind, we are living in Internet times.”
“Before we wanted to do lyrical and subtle, this time we show the beauty, but it is manmade,” he said. “We forget how rivers are — make bigger impression than the real thing. When you look at the dancers, I drift away.”
For the score Lin turned another unconventional pianist-composer, Frenchman Erik Satie and some others he did not name.
“The music for White Water is piano, all the way through 50 minutes … it will drive people crazy all that piano, but it’s so beautiful.”
After six performances of White Water and Dust, the company will switch gears with a revival of 2009’s Pine Smoke (松煙, previously known as Cursive II) for four shows at the National Theater.
The troupe then begins a nationwide tour of the new double bill on Dec. 6 in Taoyuan County that will see them in Greater Taichung, Chiayi and Greater Kaohsiung on weekends through the rest of next month.
Performance notes
WHAT: White Water and Dust
WHEN: Nov. 19 to Nov. 22 at 7:45pm, Nov. 22 and Nov. 23 at 2:45pm
WHERE: National Theater (國家戲劇院), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
ADMISSION: NT$400 to NT$2,400. All NT$2,400 seats are sold out except for Saturday matinee. Available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at 7-Eleven ibon kiosks and other convenience chain store ticketing kiosks
ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES: Dec. 6 at 7:30pm and Dec. 7 at 2:30pm at the Taoyuan County Performing Arts Center (桃園縣展演中心), 1188 Jhongjheng Rd, Taoyuan City (桃園市中正路1188號); Dec. 12 and Dec. 13 at 7:30pm and Dec. 14 at 2:30pm at the Chungshan Hall (台中市文化局中山堂), 98 Syueshih Rd, Greater Taichung (台中 市學士路98號); Dec. 19 and Dec. 20 at 7:30pm at the Chiayi Performing Arts Center (嘉義縣表演藝術中心演藝廳), 265, Jianguo Rd Sec 2, Minsyong Township, Chiayi County (嘉義縣民雄鄉建國路二段265號); and Dec. 26 and Dec. 27 at 7:30pm at the Kaohsiung Cultural Center’s Chihteh Hall (高雄市文化中心至德堂) , 67 Wufu 1st Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市五福一路67號). Tickets NT$300 to NT$2,000; available at the door, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at 7-Eleven ibon kiosks and other convenience chain store ticketing kiosks
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