Kaohsiung-based Solar Site Dance Company (索拉舞蹈空間) is braving the chillier weather of Taipei this weekend to showcase company founder Pan Ta-chien’s (潘大謙) newest work, Drifting Sand (低吹沙).
While most people, if playing a word association game, would liken sand to beaches, sunny days and fun, Pan is using grains of sand as a metaphor for human devices and desires.
That is not really surprising considering the 10-year-old troupe’s previous works have centered on exploring contemporary social issues, especially those created or exacerbated by increasing globalization and commercialization.
Photo courtesy of Liu Ren-hao
However, the Hong Kong-born Pan takes a rather unorthodox approach to choreography, since he was trained as an artist and worked as one for almost two decades, including many years spent living in France.
“My wife is a dancer, so for a long time I know dancers. Choreographing developed very slowly for me, but I can show them how to do things. If you try to paint something like a word, it’s not a visual work. I want to work with time, with people, try to create something small and spectacular,” Pan said on Monday in a telephone interview from Kaohsiung.
“For a visual artist, it is always about using concepts, but for dancers it is about the body, about movement,” he said.
Photo courtesy of Solar Dance Company
Pan said he began “creating performances” for Solar Site about three years ago. His first work, in 2013, was inspired by Franz Kafka’s Inder Strafkolonie [In the Penal Colony]. His second was last year’s Outsider Alley, which the troupe performed at the Experimental Theater in Taipei in July last year.
“I always make a point of how to live in this world, the system, the politics and power, urbanization, the desire of people, our history,” he said. “This year I try to focus on the destiny of man.”
Work on the company’s new piece, which was created in collaboration with artistic director Cheng Hsiao-lan (程曉嵐) and Kaohsiung-based dancer/choreographer Wang Kuo-chuen (王國權), began in June, and it premiered in Kaohsiung on Oct. 17.
“The name [of the new piece] is Drifting Sand. I hope the dancers can imitate the wind and the sand; the way the sand flows on the land. Very slow movements, but very real change,” Pan said.
However, the sand created problems for his seven-member cast, which includes Wang as a guest artist.
“The dancers are always hurt by the sand. They must learn how to dance on it. The first time, they were all hurt by the sand; it is just like dancing on sandpaper,” Pan said. “I asked them if they wanted to get rid of the sand, but they said no.”
He had the dancers watch the wind blow plastic bags, so that they could sense the patterns of the wind and emulate what it is like to be blown around.”
The company’s program notes say that sand grains carried by the wind can eventually create a desert, but it takes time, and happens so slowly that an observer might not notice until it is too late. The sand is an undercurrent, creeping slowly forward —when it encounters an obstacle, it moves around it, but eventually successive waves of sand gracefully change the landscape, creating a new destiny.
Pan compares the gradual buildup of drifting sand to the way mankind is changing its natural habitat and the way humans question the intrinsic quality of their existence.
Drifting Sand explores how modern humans face the world and how they survive it.
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