Despite an abundance of local dance talent, Taiwan has no renowned ballet company to call its own. But great troupes do visit — including the English National Ballet this past May. And once a year, Art Wave’s (黑潮藝術) annual Ballet Star Gala brings together some of the world’s pre-eminent principal dancers for a cornucopia of pas de deux.
Organizer Wang Tzer-shing (王澤馨) said this year’s edition of the gala, to be staged today and tomorrow at the National Theater in Taipei, is exceptionally balanced between classical and modern ballet styles.
Modern ballet pieces by prominent choreographers — Rudi van Dantzig, essential to the development of the Dutch National Ballet and Frederick Ashton, who established a distinctive English ballet style — are followed by 19th-century classics by Marius Petipa, the original choreographer of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
Photo courtesy of Mikael Ohlsson
And despite a relatively short organization this year, Wang said stars from the Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company, Dutch National Ballet, Berlin State Ballet and Bayerisches Staatsballett have all agreed to descend on Taiwan for one weekend in the very middle of the beginning of Europe’s new artistic season.
From Swan Lake, White Swan Pas de Deux will be performed by National Ballet of Canada principal dancers Svetlana Lunkina and Ben Rudisin, while Berlin State Ballet principal Polina Semionova and Dutch National Ballet soloist Martin ten Kortenaar will star in the Black Swan Pas de Deux.
Meanwhile, principal Anna Ol — who also featured in the 2022 gala — and soloist Jan Spunda from the Dutch National Ballet are performing the Balcony Pas de Deux from Sergei Prokofiev’s classic Romeo and Juliet in the famous modern ballet rendering by Dantzig.
Photo courtesy of Maria Helena Buckley
Other highlights include three Taiwan premieres. Dancing couple and Bayerisches Staatsballett principals Laurretta Summerscales and Yonah Acosta will star in the Fanny Elssler Pas de Deux from Ashton’s La fille mal gardee, while Seminova and Ten Kortenaar will lead the premier of Roland Petit’s 1949 work Carmen - with music by Georges Bizet. Finally, Ol and Spunda will dance Remi Wörtmeyer’s 2022 work Penumbra, a choreography to the Andante from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in G minor.
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
The classic warmth of a good old-fashioned izakaya beckons you in, all cozy nooks and dark wood finishes, as tables order a third round and waiters sling tapas-sized bites and assorted — sometimes unidentifiable — skewered meats. But there’s a romantic hush about this Ximending (西門町) hotspot, with cocktails savored, plating elegant and never rushed and daters and diners lit by candlelight and chandelier. Each chair is mismatched and the assorted tables appear to be the fanciest picks from a nearby flea market. A naked sewing mannequin stands in a dimly lit corner, adorned with antique mirrors and draped foliage
The consensus on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair race is that Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) ran a populist, ideological back-to-basics campaign and soundly defeated former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the candidate backed by the big institutional players. Cheng tapped into a wave of popular enthusiasm within the KMT, while the institutional players’ get-out-the-vote abilities fell flat, suggesting their power has weakened significantly. Yet, a closer look at the race paints a more complicated picture, raising questions about some analysts’ conclusions, including my own. TURNOUT Here is a surprising statistic: Turnout was 130,678, or 39.46 percent of the 331,145 eligible party
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