A couple of years ago Kaohsiung City Ballet (KCB, 高雄城市芭蕾舞團) founder Chang Hsiu-ru (張秀如) talked about ending the annual Dance Shoe (點子鞋) series that she launched in 2004 as a platform for young Taiwanese choreographers, especially those from southern Taiwan, as well as her senior dancers. She wondered if the time and money spent commissioning new works and mounting a touring show might be put to more a productive use.
Luckily for dance fans, choreographers and her dancers, she decided to continue. Ironically enough, the shows have only gotten stronger over the past few years, while the list of choreographers whose early talent she spotted has become almost a who’s who for those breaking through on the national and international scene: Lin Hsiang-hsiu (林向秀), Huang Huai-te (黃懷德), Yeh Ming-hwa (葉名樺), Benson Tsai Po-chen (蔡博丞) and Lai Hung-chung (賴翃中) are just a few who come to mind.
The shows are always an eclectic mix of contemporary duets and small group pieces, and while not every piece is a winner, there are always more hits than misses, and this year’s program, which premiered at the National Experimental Theater in Taipei on Saturday last weekend, was no exception.
Photo: Courtesy of Liu Ren-haur
The company will perform 2018 Dance Shoe at Kaohsiung Cultural Center’s Chihteh Hall (高雄市文化中心至德堂), tomorrow at 7:30pm and then again on Feb. 3 at 7:30pm and Feb. 4 at 2:30pm at the Tainan Municipal Cultural Center (台南市立台南文化中心國際廳原生劇場) at 7:30pm.
The show opened with Chien Lin-yi’s (簡麟懿) Shall We, danced by Chien, Ho Tzu-wen (何姿妏), Wang Yu-heng (王昱閎) and Yeh Chin-cheng (葉晉誠), which consisted of four short sections and had a snappy edginess I quite liked despite the overall unevenness.
Chien’s previous pieces have either been solos or duets, and he said that he felt very challenged in trying to create a work for a quartet. While it was hard to discern a theme for the piece, he showed a flair for good partnering, so I found it best to stop wondering what it was all about and just enjoy the dancing.
Much more assured, as expected, was Constantin Georgescu’s duet Breath, with former Cloud Gate 2 (雲門 2) dancer Lu Tian-ruei (呂天瑞), whom I last saw in that company’s Spring Riot show last year.
Set to an excerpt from Max Richter’s Sleep the pair begin in separate circles of light with moves that gradually expand from arms, to their legs, to their whole bodies, independent of one another yet connected by their breathing.
The choreography grows more expansive, even joyful, yet the pair remain separate almost until the end when there is just a brush of an arm, a touch on a shoulder, before the piece ends with them standing close, breathing deeply.
Lai’s False (謬) was a tightly crafted duet for Lee Hang-cheng (李杭澄) and Lin Tse-an (林則安), set to the kind of moody music — from Hymn Binding’s The Mouth of the Sun — that is almost becoming a hallmark for Lai.
Wei Tzu-ling (魏梓錂), whose work I have not seen before, created a great piece for Kuo Jung-an (郭蓉安), Liao Kun-sheng (廖坤勝) and Chuang Po-hsiang (莊博翔), entitled The Gap (間 隙) and set to an excerpt from Offering by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass.
Kuo and her two partners start off in their own rectangles of light, their own worlds, before the gaps merge and they combine for some terrific dancing.
I was a bit disappointed by Dai Ting-ju’s (戴鼎如) Flowing Island (流光之島), danced by Dai, Lu and Hsia Chia-hui (夏嘉徽). Each woman has long solos, and there was some nice duet work, but the women’s connection to one another, or the storyline, remained a mystery.
Overall this edition of Dance Shoe was remarkable for two things: new faces among the dancers, especially the men, and great lighting designs for all five works by Kuan Yun-hsing (關雲翔).
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