Berlin-based Taiwanese choreographer Sun Shang-chi (孫尚綺) is back home on a working visit and has brought with him some of his frequent collaborators, the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin (KNM Berlin), a contemporary music ensemble.
They are presenting two different productions, Spur (溯形), in the Experimental Theater at the National Theater this weekend and The Photographer (攝影師) next weekend in the Playhouse at the National Taichung Theater. Both stem from their explorations of two prominent names in contemporary music, US composer Philip Glass and Austrian composer Beat Furrer.
Sun, a graduate of the National Academy of the Arts (renamed the National Taiwan University of the Arts in 2001) and moved to Germany in 2001 to join Nuremberg Modern Dance Theatre after being one of the initial members of Cloud Gate 2 (雲門 2).
Photo Courtesy of Achim Plum
His choreographic talents gained attention in 2005 when he won the Bavarian Theater and Literature Prize. He then won an award at the 12th International Solo Tanz Festival Stuttgart in 2008 — one year after he founded his own troupe, Shangchi Move Theatre (綺動力舞團) — while also earning a masters’ degree in choreography from Ernst Busch University in Berlin.
He has created work for the Berlin-based Sasha Waltz & Guests, Transitions Company London and Dance Company of City Theatre Osnabruck, and returned home several times on commissions — for Cloud Gate 2 in 2011 [Genus (屬輩)], the National Theater Concert Hall (NTCH) [Uphill (浮‧動)] for the 2013 Taiwan International Festival of the Arts and by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in August [Perspicuum (透明)].
Spur, which premiered in Berlin in July last year, is part of NTCH’s “Dancing in Autumn” series and is the latest collaboration between Sun and KNM Berlin, which began three years ago with a revival of the The Photographer, a 1982 work by Dutch designer/director Rob Malasch and Glass.
Photo Courtesy of Sven Hagolani
“Spur” means “trace” in German and the 60-minute show is an exploration of time, space and movement. It is a story about multiple lives and searching for lost memories.
Furrer creates sound landscapes from simultaneous overlapping movements and repetition of single tones.
Sun said he finds Furrer’s music to be “both daring and sensual… He never hesitates to exploit the full potentiality of the instruments to experiment with new soundscapes.”
Photo Courtesy of Pierro Chiussi
The Photographer stems from a commission the Holland Festival gave Malasch in 1982. He decided to do a work based on the 19th century English-born, San Francisco-based photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who is best remembered for his photographs of Yosemite National Park and studies in motion chronophotography.
Malasch asked Glass to collaborate and they decided to create a three-act work: a play, a concert and a dance.
Less well known now, but a major scandal at the time, was Muybridge’s 1874 trial for the murder of his wife’s lover, a Scotland-born drama critic who called himself Major Harry Larkyns, and this is what Malasch and Glass focused their work on.
After Muybridge discovered an exchange of letters between his wife and Larkyns that hinted his son might not actually be his, he set off for Larkyns’ home north of San Francisco and shot him after he opened the door.
Muybridge pleaded insanity at his trial, but his defense argued that a head injury suffered in a stagecoach accident had altered his personality; the jury acquitted Muybridge, against the judge’s instructions, on the grounds of justifiable homicide.
Glass wrote incidental music for the play, which tells the story of Muybridge’s life and the trial; a concert for violin and ensemble that accompanies a showing of Muybridge’s work, and the music for the dance. He asked Talking Heads frontman David Byrne to write the lyrics based on material from the trial and Muybridge’s letters.
In 2014, the Ensemble KNM Berlin collaborated with Kunstbibliothek — Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and KolnMusik and Sun on a revival of the work, with Sun directing and providing the choreography.
Sun’s three dancer/actors are Annapaola Leso, Samuel Deniz Falcon and David Pallant, while the Taipei Chamber Singers (台北室內合唱團) will accompany KNM’s musicians.
The Photographer runs 70 minutes and will be performed in English with Chinese subtitles. It comes with two advisories: that it is not suitable for children under the age of six and that latecomers will not be admitted.
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