The National Theater Concert Hall’s (NTCH) biennial fall series, Dancing in Autumn (舞蹈秋天), this year has a bittersweet flavor, as it features farewell works by two great choreographers: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) and British contemporary choreographer Akram Khan, although in the latter’s case, it is a goodbye to his role as a performer, not a choreographer.
This year’s series, appropriately titled Stop Talking, Start Dancing! (閉幕派對), offers a wide variety of works, both big and small, that are sure to keeping people talking for weeks, if not longer.
In addition, two of the major productions will also be performed in Kaohsiung and Taichung, spreading the wealth from north to south, while for the first time the Cloud Gate Theater in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) will be the venue for another.
Photo courtesy of Jean-Louis Fernandez
So while Cloud Gate’s EXCHANGE, featuring works by Lin, his successor, Cheng Tsung-lung (鄭宗龍) and TAO Dance Theater (陶身體劇場) founder Tao Ye (陶冶), is one of the series highlights, it will premiere at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) on Friday next week, before opening at the National Theater on Oct. 17 and then moving to the National Taichung Theater (NTT) on Oct. 26 as part of that theater’s Fall for Great Souls (遇見巨人) series.
Lin’s work, Autumn River (秋水), is set on five senior dancers who are leaving the company, while Cheng’s piece, Multiplication (乘法), is set on TAO’s nine dancers, and Tao’s piece, 12, is set on 12 Cloud Gate dancers.
Khan’s production, XENOS, features his final performances as a dancer in a full-length work; after decades of dancing, his 45-year-old body is reaching the point where he is no longer sure he can perform to his exacting standards.
Photo courtesy of Liu Chen-hsiang
XENOS, which means “stranger” or “foreigner,” was inspired by the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers who fought for the British Empire in World War I, and suffered through the massive slaughter of the frontline battle fields of that conflict.
Khan’s idea is that “be it to live or to die, war has made us strangers to ourselves.”
XENOS opens at the NTT’s Playhouse on Oct. 26 for two shows before moving to the National Theater for three performances starting Nov. 1.
.jpg)
Photo courtesy of Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup
Dancing in Autumn actually kicks off on Thursday next week with Frederick Gravel’s Some Hope for the Bastards, an ode to the apathy and helpless feelings of impotence of a society that has lost its way, at the National Theater, while a mixed program at the National Experimental Theater opens the following night, featuring solo dances by Taiwanese choreographers Su Pin-wen (蘇品文), Tien Hsiao-tzu (田孝慈) and Cheng Hao (鄭皓), who were challenged to create a dance within the timeframe of a TED video.
Su Wen-chi’s (蘇文琪) Anthropic Shadow (人類黑區) will be in the Experimental Theater from Oct. 18 to 20, followed by Belgian choreographer Jan Martens’ double bill of Rule of Three and Ode to the Attempt from Oct. 24 to 27.
Marten’s works were inspired by the idea of creating dance works based on the state and perception of a person’s mind when they are using their smartphone.
.jpg)
Photo courtesy of Jens Sethzman
Vessel, created by Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet and Japanese sculptor Kohei Nawa, will be performed at the Cloud Gate Theater from Nov. 15 to 17, while Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen’s to come (extended), an updating of her 2005 work about human sexuality and pleasure, will be performed at the Experimental Theater from Nov. 15 to 17.
For the series finale, Meimage Dance (何曉玫MeimageDance) will perform Ho Hsiao-mei’s (何曉玫) latest full-length work renaissance of its ashes(極相林) at the National Theater starting on Nov. 23.
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
The sprawling port city of Kaohsiung seldom wins plaudits for its beauty or architectural history. That said, like any other metropolis of its size, it does have a number of strange or striking buildings. This article describes a few such curiosities, all but one of which I stumbled across by accident. BOMBPROOF HANGARS Just north of Kaohsiung International Airport, hidden among houses and small apartment buildings that look as though they were built between 15 and 30 years ago, are two mysterious bunker-like structures that date from the airport’s establishment as a Japanese base during World War II. Each is just about
Taiwan, once relegated to the backwaters of international news media and viewed as a subset topic of “greater China,” is now a hot topic. Words associated with Taiwan include “invasion,” “contingency” and, on the more cheerful side, “semiconductors” and “tourism.” It is worth noting that while Taiwanese companies play important roles in the semiconductor industry, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan semiconductor” or a “Taiwan chip.” If crucial suppliers are included, the supply chain is in the thousands and spans the globe. Both of the variants of the so-called “silicon shield” are pure fantasy. There are four primary drivers
RSS