A lot was riding on the world premiere of choreographer Cheng Tsung-lun’s (鄭宗龍) latest piece, Sounding Light (定光), his first full-length work for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) since taking over as artistic director from founder Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) at the beginning of this year.
Sounding Light, which opened at the National Theater in Taipei on Oct. 1, and will be in Kaoshiung this weekend and in Taichung next weekend, was a revelation — a light, airy work at once both earthy and etheral.
However, it also raised the question of what it might have looked like if COVID-19 had not hit the world.
Photo courtesy of Lee Chia-yeh
Cheng has said in several interviews that he was inspired by the forced solitude of the mandatory 14-day quarantine that he and other company members had to complete after returning from a European tour earlier this year.
The sounds of the neighborhood around where he was staying obviously made him more introspective than normal, and contemplative of the sounds of the natural world and those of humans.
The result is a quieter, more subtle piece than audiences have come to expect from the man who brought the sights and sounds of his Wanhua District (萬華) childhood to life in 13 Tongues (十三聲) for Cloud Gate 2 (雲門2), or used technology to such great effect in Lunar Halo (毛月亮).
Watching Sounding Light makes you feel like you are sitting in a sun-dappled glen early in the morning, seeing and hearing the forest come to life around you, but with a microscopic view of the insects, birds and other creatures. It was almost as if a David Attenborough documentary had come to life in front of you.
The sounds — the breaths of wind, the rustling of leaves, the crepitation of cicadas and the patter of rain — are not from a soundtrack, but from the dancers themselves, starting with the bird calls that open the show, thanks to the ideas and training providing by New York City-based composer Chang Shiuan (張玹).
The patterns of the light and shadow falling from above onto the bare white-gray walls and floor move as if tracing the sun’s path over the course of a day as it filters through the clouds and a canopy of trees, thanks to the magic of lighting designer Lulu W. W. Lee (李琬玲).
However, most of all you see the dancers — really get to see them.
The 12 dancers I saw — Chen Tsung-chiao (陳宗喬), Chou Chen-yeh (周辰燁), Fan Chia-hsuan (范家瑄), Huang Lu-kai (黃律開), Huang Yung-huai (黃詠淮), Lee Tzu-chun (李姿君), Liao Chin-ting (廖錦婷), Shao Hsing-wen (邵倖紋), Su I-chieh (蘇怡潔), Tsou Ying-lin (鄒瑩霖), Wu Jui-ying (吳睿穎), Yeh Po-sheng (葉博聖) — are a mix of Cloud Gate veterans and members of Cloud Gate 2, which has now been absorbed into the main company.
The combined troupe has given Cheng the luxury of mixing and matching dancers and having enough to field two full casts for a show.
Sounding Light was a reminder, if one was needed, that Cloud Gate dancers, regardless of which company they were with, have always been soloist-caliber performers.
Cheng makes the most of such talent by gives each dancer time to shine, either with an extended solo or in a duet, even as he challenges their muscles and stamina with a physically demanding movement language that ranges from sharp hip and arm angles to undulating hands, arms and torsos to hip-hop-flavored pops or Taoist parade god rocking gaits.
Cheng interweaves the solos with duets that often resemble avian mating dances, along with ensemble sections that show his mastery of pattern making.
The show opens with a beautifully calibrated solo, danced in Taipei by Tsou, who was later joined for a duet by Huang Lu-kai. Other standouts in their solos were Su, Liao and Yeh, who was always one of my favorite of the Cloud Gate 2 men.
As he did Lunar Halo, Cheng has created an otherworldly environment, but one that is also at times startling familiar.
Sounding Light is a beautifully crafted work and one that will bear repeated viewings, as I can attest, for after seeing the Oct. 2 show, I returned the following night to watch it again.
Cloud Gate will perform on Saturday and Sunday afternoon at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, with the second cast, and then next weekend it will be at the National Taichung Theater for two matinee shows with the same cast that danced in Taipei.
Don’t miss the chance to catch Sounding Light.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would