The Body Expression Dance Theatre (BodyEDT, 體相舞蹈劇場) has been around for 19 years, but it still flies under the radar of many contemporary dance fans, although the Ministry of Culture has increasingly taken note of its works and provided sponsorship.
In recent years, founder and choreographer Lee Ming-cheng (李名正) has increasingly incorporated digital technology and multi-media effects into his pieces, and his newest, EDI — Sequence of Number, which premieres tonight at the Wellspring Theater in Taipei’s Gongguan District (公館), takes the trend a step further.
Lee wanted to explore spatial and numeric relationships, the mechanical inertia of the human body and the serialization of movement, so for this piece he is using six dancers, 42 motors and 21 LED lights that hang from the ceiling, but can move up and down.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Chiu Wei-chung
The relationship between the motors, the lights and the dancers, sometimes in sync, other times appearing indifferent, form the core of the work.
Just as the lights and motors are numbers, so are the limbs of the dancers in structuring the choreography.
The company calls the work “digital dance theater,” and says the letters EDI in the title stand for edit, definition and identify.
Instead of the usual bleacher seating at the theater, facing a long performance space, Lee has split the seating in half, so that audiences will have a difference perspective of the production depending on which side they choose to sit.
■ Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm at Taipei City Shuiyuan (Wellspring) Theater (台北市水源劇場), 92 Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段92號)
■ Tickets are NT$600, available at the NTCH box offices, Eslite ticket booths, online at www.artsticket.com, at convenience store ticket kiosks and at the door
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