The departure for Europe was fast approaching, and the artists’ excitement was palpable. At the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Center in Taipei, cultural representatives and several European diplomats gathered on Friday, June 20, to give a warm send-off to the dozen Taiwanese performing artists preparing to represent the island at two prestigious European festivals: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the United Kingdom, taking place from August 1 to 25, and the Avignon «Off» Festival in southeastern France, running through July 26. They also attended a special preview of the performances.
In these three works presented in France, Taiwanese dance and circus performers drew inspiration from traditional forms, natural phenomena, daily observations and interpersonal relationships to stage the complexity and instability of the relationships – both human and geopolitical – that they experience.
The first performance, Push and Pull, is a duet choreographed by Lai Hung-chung, founder of the contemporary dance company Hung Dance. In a choreography blending tai chi – a traditional Chinese martial art – with naturalistic contemporary ballet, two dancers, a woman and a man, dressed in simple, earth-toned outfits, confront each other in a series of movements juxtaposing softness and hardness, slowness and speed, explosivity and minimal force. This philosophy of movement is inspired by Taoism, a religion widely practiced in Taiwan. In the background, a continuous rumbling mingles with a looped piano melody shifting in tempo, while a microphone captures and re-broadcasts in real time the sounds produced by the dancers’ bodies.
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