衛武營國家藝術文化中心 National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying)

By FAN Xiang-jun, speaker, Writing About Dance—I Review Workshop; observer, 2020 Taiwan Dance Platform.

I last saw a performance by LIU Yen-Cheng at the 2018 Innovation Series Dance performed at the National Theater and Concert Hall. The series of performances were connected by the challenging theme The Rite of Spring, which was both a clear homage to the famous ballet and an alternative interpretation that challenges the original. For every master choreographer of each generation, there is always a hurdle like The Rite of Spring that needs to be crossed; it's as if every choreographer must create their own variation of The Rite of Spring at some point. Nevertheless, the National Theater and Concert Hall was quite lenient with these young Taiwanese choreographers—LIN Su-lien, LIU Kuan-hsiang, and LIU Yen-cheng—who, despite the theme, were not required to incorporate music from The Rite of Spring and were given free rein on the title and development direction of their dance pieces.

Under this theme, LIU Yen-cheng choreographed a short piece titled The End of Journey, which was performed by TIEN Hsiao-tzu and the choreographer himself. As I remembered it, the piece was mostly accompanied by ambient sound and changing lights. The performers made rigid movements like papier-mâché dolls, making it unclear if they were going to dance or not. In the end, they subtly twisted and turned atop pallet boards, fully engrossed as if in an idle state of self-indulgence. Although the performance did not have the stereotypical atmosphere associated with the connection between dancing and ceremonial rituals, this implication of "wasted time" seemed to be a veiled criticism directed at the ceremonial nature of certain performing arts productions. This implication is further reinforced by the title The End of Journey. After the performance, one of my strongest impressions with The End of Journey was that the choreographer truly had something to say. Although the message was a bit ambiguous, I did find a certain poetic quality to it.

This year's Taiwan Dance Platform at Weiwuying saw A Piece of Cake return to the stage again. Supposedly created at the same time as The End of Journey, the piece was also trying to relay a message, except this time it was much more apparent, especially since choreographer LIU Yen-cheng actually spoke on stage. However, his speech was not directed toward the audience, but delivered with his back towards the audience and facing a phone that was live-streaming the performance. LIU Yen-cheng live-streamed the performance on stage. Soon after the performance began, I realized that the choreographer was not only live-streaming the performance; he was streaming from a different camera angle. This caused some anxiety in me as an audience member, but this anxiety was not because of the seemingly subtle yet actually imposing nature of LIU's stage presence. (He had identified himself as the choreographer in the pre-show address, after all.) My anxiety actually stemmed from a type of modern information vortex that causes one to need to grasp at every bit of information: If I couldn't watch the show live, I would want to watch the live stream; yet when I actually do see it live, I still want to watch the live stream. Although A Piece of Cake was not created as a performance for a pandemic world, one could also interpret it as a criticism of how performing artists limited and freed themselves during the pandemic. To put it another way, pandemic or not, this endless need to "speak out and take place" and the incessant anxiety to acquire information in order to "keep up with the latest trends" are ever-present.

LIU first set up a phone at the corner of the stage next to a scrolling LED display that displayed texts, some upright and some inverted, of scattered thoughts and theoretical descriptions that analyzed topics such as viewpoints and theatrical authenticity. The allure and perhaps the most ambiguous part of theater lies in the fact that it is a space that allows every audience member to freely associate and connect what happens on stage to different phenomena, piecing them together to create their own dream. Thus, when I became aware of the aforementioned anxiety, and realized that I couldn’t tell what the choreographer was saying to the phone, I told myself that I might as well let go of the desire to see the live stream, think of all this as the best possible arrangement, and pretend that the scrolling texts are what the choreographer was saying on the live stream. At the very least, I acknowledged to myself that being seated in that theater put me in a position to receive the "important" or "correct" information.

Then, let us return to the performance under the stage light. WANG Chu-hua and SHEN Le are both said to be considerably extraordinary performers. WANG has an especially nimble stage presence that is eye-catching even in some of the more ineffective dance segments of A Piece of Cake. This is not to mention the encore segment, where the unique and distinct bodily rhythms of the two performers prompted the audience to clap to the beat. Nevertheless, if someone asked me if I had any special thoughts on their performance, I would have to say no, for the bright texts scrolling across the large LED display and the strong messages delivered by the texts had already enveloped the entire space.

LIU explained in the live stream afterward that "although the live dance performance offered a reasonably complete look at the piece, the most important part of this work is not the dancing itself." From the choreographer to every production team member, each person carried a piece of the message that formed the entire cake. If I want to taste another piece of cake, in other words, another aspect of the piece, I would have to find the time to watch the live stream after the performance. This is because if I were to turn on my phone to watch the live stream camera angle on the social media site, it would likely disturb the other audience members.

At this point, the performance, the angle from the side stage Liu prepared for the live stream viewers, and the angles exhibited by the performance on stage gradually spread out over time and, in a way spilled out over the performance itself. What the choreographer was attempting to deconstruct and reconstruct here is the definition of a performance and what defines a work of art. However, this is not an extension of the utopian dream that postmodern dancers of the past aspired for, which was about freeing theatrical elements from their rigid hierarchy and implementing a proclaimed equality through juxtaposition and superposition. On the contrary, since one cannot watch the live stream and the live performance at the same time, LIU as the creator becomes the focal point of the piece. With the focus on the creator's compelling stage presence and the large LED text display (no matter whether the contents of the texts were conceived by the choreographer or the entire body of performers on the stage), as an audience member, I could only use the limited clues provided to directly connect LIU's speech to the live stream and the texts on the LED display. As for the live stream viewers, they were not able to see the entire performance because they did not buy the tickets.

At this point, the performance, the angle from the side stage Liu prepared for the live stream viewers, and the angles exhibited by the performance on stage gradually spread out over time and, in a way spilled out over the performance itself. What the choreographer was attempting to deconstruct and reconstruct here is the definition of a performance and what defines a work of art. However, this is not an extension of the utopian dream that postmodern dancers of the past aspired for, which was about freeing theatrical elements from their rigid hierarchy and implementing a proclaimed equality through juxtaposition and superposition. On the contrary, since one cannot watch the live stream and the live performance at the same time, LIU as the creator becomes the focal point of the piece. With the focus on the creator's compelling stage presence and the large LED text display (no matter whether the contents of the texts were conceived by the choreographer or the entire body of performers on the stage), as an audience member, I could only use the limited clues provided to directly connect LIU's speech to the live stream and the texts on the LED display. As for the live stream viewers, they were not able to see the entire performance because they did not buy the tickets.

FAN Xiang-jun

FAN is a Ph.D. candidate in dance research at the Taipei National University of the Arts. She currently lives in Berlin and has a passion for contact improvisation. The topics of her studies mostly focus on the history of dance, cultural studies, and physical practice, but also cross fields to contact improvisation. FAN was a juror at the 17^th Taishin Arts Award, a critic-in-residence on the NCAF Performing Arts Reviews website, a dramaturgy intern at the Austrian Linz State Theater for the piece Le Sacre, a dance dramaturg at the Anarchy Dance Theater for the piece The Eternal Straight Line, and a columnist for the online platform ARTouch. Her articles and reviews can also be found in the Performing Arts Review Magazine.

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【2020 Taiwan Dance Platform】"Dance Together" Triple Bill

2020 Taiwan Dance Platform