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Selecting Flavors for Your Taiwan Dance Platform Sundae
By WEI Wan-jung (OISTAT executive director)
This year's Taiwan Dance Platform at Weiwuying is based on the concept of the body being a history of dance. The body's history can be divided into two aspects, the first being the personal, such as where I grew up, where I lived later in life to develop my career, the schools I attended, and what kind of dance training I received. All these things are like accumulated layers of skin, each representing a part of my body's history.
The second is ethnic group/nationality, such as the things my group has experienced and our shared memories. These things accumulate to form our culture, which in turn shapes our thoughts and the way we use our bodies. Of the 12 choreographers at the 2024 Taiwan Dance Platform, some are pondering their bodies' histories in the personal aspect, while others are doing so from the perspective of ethnic group/nationality.
From Weiwuying's Crown Hall terraces on the third floor, you can enjoy a view of the sky in the daytime and at night. On the East Crown Terrace (by the café), Papak and A Dancer's Odyssey will show, offering a comparison of a personal history and a group memory. One comes from the story of an individual, and the other is from a group's culture. The performances that will go on at the West Crown Terrace (by the bookstore) are related to motion and gravity: In Factory deals with horizontal mechanical forces, and the other, Journey of Rokuro, includes the centrifugal force of a pottery wheel, both being expressions of how external physical forces affect dance.
Another way to understand these programs is to look at where the choreographers have traveled. Three Taiwanese women who have lived abroad and are of different generational backgrounds—LIN I-fang, LIN Yen-chin, and CHIEN Ching-ying—exhibit through dance something that can't be ignored: women's voices. CERCLE and Proximities, the joint work of a Chinese-French choreographer of Laotian descent and a Taiwanese dance troupe, will put on a show that blends street dance, contemporary, and traditional Thai and Laotian dance. Three pieces to show at the Outdoor Theater are Colors, Invisible Habitudes, and Hand in Hand, We Dance, respectively from Taitung, Singapore, and Hengchun. Bursting at the seams with energy, these pieces would be hard to contain in an indoor venue!
The Taiwan Dance Platform is akin to an ice cream shop with sweet flavors like caramel, "adult" flavors like coffee, and experimental flavors like salty peanut. If you like things that are sweet, Party, Colors, and Hand in Hand, We Dance are sure to bring a lasting smile to your face as you realize, "That's right, I am beautiful! I am unique!"
If experimental is your preference, LIN I-fang's Ban-ping Shan and LIN Yen-chin's On The Way To __ __ are inspirational with their amazing concepts and precise execution. The adult taste shows how choreographers deal with social issues: Papak, Invisible Habitudes, A Dancer's Odyssey, and Adam & Eve narrate personal body history and group history.
If you're a fan of the power of physics and want to see how mechanical forces affect dance, In Factory and Journey of Rokuro are perfect for you. The former has a horizontally moving mechanism and the latter has a spinning disc, both offering intriguing looks at how dancers deal with added external forces. For those who enjoy a clean dance vocabulary, choreographer Olé KHAMCHANLA neatly brings together street dance, traditional dance, and ballet in the solo-performed CERCLE and group-performed Proximities.
People often ask me, "Which programs at the Taiwan Dance Platform should I see? There are so many but I don't have enough time for them all." I think you should look at it like ordering a sundae. Regardless of what flavor you like best, if your sundae is all just one flavor, you're missing out. How about trying something new, like a blend of caramel and salty peanut? The same goes for your "sundae" at the Taiwan Dance Platform!
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