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Get Past Life's Mishaps—Start Dancing!
by CHOU Shu-yi, Weiwuying Artist-In-Residence
On the afternoon of September 18, I was giving a lecture on the third floor of the Kaohsiung Public Library about everything from the planning to the performance of the program Bolero in Kaohsiung this summer. Many of the attendees had been to ten or more of the showings, and even more surprisingly, those showings had been their first experiences with contemporary dance. A man from Mituo District said he had gone to a performance the day after hearing about it from others in his neighborhood. Someone else was only able to make it to the last two showings at Weiwuying. Upon seeing the black-costumed dancers, he thought he had come to the wrong place because the pictures online showed multi-colored costumes. Only later did he find out that the Weiwuying performance was a special edition.
As the lecture began, a magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck, bringing massive destruction to Yuli Township in Hualien, including a collapsed bridge and train platform roof and derailed train carriages. As we were discussing the dynamic of viewing a performance, I felt the floor start to move up and down and then side to side. I told the attendees not to panic and to cover their heads with their seat cushions. Once the shaking stopped, we continued with the lecture. At that time, Weiwuying's artistic director was conducting Neo-Classic Dance Company's Carmina Burana at the National Theater and Concert Hall, and Legend Lin Dance Theatre's Song of Pensive Beholding was on at Weiwuying. Though both stopped momentarily, they quickly carried on with poise despite the confusion. In the face of mishaps in life, people do all they can to make it through, and my hope is that they can continue on with greater courage once the challenge is over. It made me think about the past two years with Covid, which has been a drawn-out mishap. It induced major change in the art world, and we have had to get used to it. Some people found creativity and potential they never would have imagined before. Similarly, it forced me, curator of the Taiwan Dance Platform, to make a major transition.
I have seen so many touching moments in the public spaces at Weiwuying, such as Tjimur Dance Theatre's four-step dance event for the Taiwan Dance Platform two years ago. The sound of music and dancing coming from Banyan Plaza touched and resonated strongly with me. That is where ideas for this year's Dance Platform Open Stage programming came from, and as a result of our experience from Bolero in Kaohsiung, we wanted to get lots of artists to join us in making art more public-oriented and thus helping more people of a greater age range see dance. We invited TSO Han-chieh, who works in developing children's creativity in the aspect of physical movement, to bring us her Kid's Notes—My Body, My Partner; LAI Tsui-shuang, who was a resident artist at the Taikang Cultural Center and worked with amateurs for two years in creating Their Stories—Daylight; the Kaohsiung City Ballet, which this year has turned 30, and choreographer YEH Ming-hwa in their joint production of Dancing Ballet; and Tjimur Dance Theatre, who will perform GO PAIWAN, a piece created by their first resident artist, LIN Wen-chung. These artists have overcome not only Covid itself but the challenges it generated, the latter being the biggest reason for us to come offer support and share.
At the Connection Stage, you will see Liederzyklus immediately followed by Girl's Notes, whose respective choreographers, TIEN Hsiao-tzu and SU Pin-wen, are both by chance collaborating with musicians in exhibiting their different views of the body. HORSE's FreeSteps—Swinging Years is the fruit of troupe leader SU Wei-chia recruiting amateur dancers of age 50 and up. WANG Yuguang and DANANG Pamungkas' Go to Your Island, Hung Dance's Birdy, and Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi's Picking the Corpus will present stories of pursuing life and identity at the Asian Connection stage.
The 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform “Island Connection: Body Online” includes ten live performances and nearly 20 dance-related videos from around the world. In addition, there will be four forums about dance and a photo exhibit. We look forward to the event inspiring new momentum while displaying the power of southern Taiwan through performances live and virtual. The body is the vehicle of our cultural language. We explore the unknown through the body and turn moments into eternities with the power of artistic creation. That is how we get past the mishaps that life throws at us!
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10/22(Sat)-11/20(Sun)
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