Llike thousands of other people, I spent Saturday evening in a haze of almost blissful perfection, sitting in Taipei’s Liberty Plaza watching Cloud Gate 2 (雲門 2) perform 13 Tongues (十三聲).
One Cloud Gate staffer told me the first audience member to arrive for the performance showed up at 11:30am to stake out a front row space. Shortly after 5pm there were only a few dozen — the bright sunshine and heat of the day I think made most people decide to postpone their arrival until closer to show time.
Yet, the evening turned out to be perfect. The temperature had cooled down, there was a nice breeze, the sky was clear — with a few stars visible — and even fireflies could be spotted zipping over the heads of the audience, their brief trails of light no competition to the terrific projection designs by Ethan Wang (王奕盛).
Photo: CNA
Inside the National Theater last year, the projections of He Jia-xing’s (何佳興) designs were sometimes overpowering, as they covered not only the stage but the proscenium as well.
Outdoors, with the stage sandwiched between two large screens, the projections were striking, helping focus attention on the stage itself, as well as conjuring up memories of the fluorescently colored traveling stages of Taiwanese puppet and opera troupes.
I still have no idea what the giant swimming koi is supposed to represent, but it does not matter because it just looks cool.
Photo: CNA
MORE POLISHED WORK
It appeared that artistic director Cheng Tsung-lung (鄭宗龍) has done some polishing of 13 Tongues, which was his first full-evening length work for the troupe; it appeared much tighter than I remember from last year.
His 11 dancers shuffled and stomped, shouted and cackled, sang and slid, swooped and twirled in endless circles of movement.
They were terrific as they evoked the energy, sights and sounds of old Taipei’s Bangka (艋舺) borough in what is Tseng’s most Taiwanese-flavored work to date.
While there were plenty of solos, duets and other pairings, 13 Tongues is very much an ensemble work and the ensemble looked terrific, as did the fluorescent costumes by Lin Bing-hao (林秉豪) donned toward the end of the show.
Cloud Gate 2 and the Cathay Arts Festival will be at the Tainan Municipal Stadium this Saturday. The show starts at 7:30pm.
VISIT TO INDONESIA
Earlier in the day I was transported to Jailolo in Indonesia’s eastern Maluku Islands, courtesy of two works by choreographer Eko Supriyanto and his EkosDance Company.
It was a budget trip compared to Cloud Gate 2’s tour of Bangka: no flashy projections or colorful costumes, just simple, strong dances in the bare space of the Experimental Theater.
The first work, Balabala, is the more recent creation. Performed by five women wearing a variety of long blue tunics worn over black ones, it is a mix of slow, rhythmic patterns, solos and group movements, with the women’s confrontational stares out into the audience, clenched fists and upraised arms harkening to the Cakelel war dance that inspired the choreographer.
Crying Jailolo is performed by seven young men, clad only in long crimson shorts and thin lines of white paint running straight down the front and backs of their legs.
It starts in darkness with a low drumming sound, which, as a spotlight gradually reveals a young man in the center of the stage, turns out to be created by the constant striking of his left heel on the floor.
As the lights come up, the other men join in the dance, which is again a mix of repetitive pattern-making, almost hypnotic in their overall effect, before it comes to an end with a single dancer, slowly disappearing as a single spotlight dims to blackness.
I liked both dances, which were each about 55 minutes long, but taken together they were too much and too similar. The company would be better served by offering shorter, perhaps 30-minute, versions for a mixed bill program.
However, the show did make me want to see more of Eko’s work — and it provided a glimpse of home to the many Indonesians who were in the audience for Saturday’s matinee and the other other three performances.
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