What's New
Weiwuying's 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform—Island Connection: Body Online—Linking Contemporary Asian Dance to the World
One of Weiwuying's three major platforms, the Taiwan Dance Platform, is being curated by Weiwuying resident artist CHOU Shu-yi, who has worked on it for about a year and a half and designated the theme as Island Connection: Body Online. The early-stage workshops and forums started in October 2021. In addition, CHOU and other Weiwuying representatives went to Germany this September for the Internationale Tanzmesse NRW in Germany to further connect with the international professional dance scenes. This November, live performances, exhibitions, workshops, and forums for the platform will explore how dance can connect with the world in the post-Covid era.
CHOU stated, "Since Taiwan is an island nation, its people have to cross oceans or use the Internet to exchange and connect with those in other countries. Planning for the biennial Taiwan Dance Platform has gone on during Covid, and when we were unable to go abroad, the artists that became confined to this island started engaging in new dialogues and looking for new means of artistic creations and productions. With sound and filmexhibition, international forums, live performances, and workshops, the platform will serve as a gathering of thoughts birthed over these past two years, reflecting how the body has continued to move and the impact of Covid has produced a new future."
Local and Overseas Creation Accented with Diversity
This year's platform not only brought together local and overseas artists but also inspired collaboration between creators from differing regions in southern Taiwan. 70% of the pieces are by artists from southern Taiwan, and several new works will be premiered (40% of all the programs have never been seen before). Also, diversity is a major feature of this year's platform: Nearly 100 of this year's performers are amateurs ranging in age from six to seventy ! So no matter who you are, you are sure to see a bodily vocabulary you can relate to. Stages and venues for the event are scattered about the grounds of Weiwuying but are connected by the common denominator of dance, just as neighboring islands seem independent but are in fact linked.
Pingtung Tjimur Dance Theatre's GO PAIWAN, the piece that was selected at the Internationale Tanzmesse NRW. It was a collaboration between the company's resident artist, LIN Wen-chung and dancers. He uses experimental choreographic choices to propose a new perspective on traditional innovation and historical contemporaneity for the indigenous presence. The sound made by the performers is the music. The piece is designed to work in all kinds of spaces whether in Taiwan or abroad. This performance, its Kaohsiung premiere, will take place at Weiwuying's Banyan Plaza, so the audio and visual experience is going to be different than in the past.
Choreographer WANG Yuguang, who was invited to take part in Aerowaves (a European dance platform for young choreographers), will present Go to Your Island with Danang PAMUNGKAS, who has a background in traditional Indonesian royal court dance and contemporary dance. Through their cross-national and cross-cultural relationship, they get a taste of each other's life experiences and, through such dialogue, together exceed their individual capacities.
At Weiwuying's Playhouse, two programs will go on back to back. First is Liederzyklus, which has been in the making for three years through a collaboration among Weiwuying, SIDance, and Cloud Gate. Dancer TIEN Hsiao-tzu, pianist LEE Shih-yang, and violist TAI Zih-ning converse with their instruments and bodies in the piece, so LEE and TAI had to learn the dancer's vocabulary of bodily tempo and flow while TIEN had to learn about music theory and sound structure. The result is a piece of improvisational brilliance that can never be exactly repeated. Then, SU Pin-wen will put on her piece Girl's Notes, a commentary on the 1984 book by the same name and which has become highly popular since its debut several years ago. For this Weiwuying-exclusive version, she is collaborating with Kaohsiung pianist LIN Mai-ke.
In addition, Weiwuying's East Crown Terrace will be made into a performance venue that ponders the vocabulary of dance and the body in Asia from the perspective of the "Asian connection." LAI Hung-chung, who graduated from the Tsoying Senior High School dance class in Kaohsiung, leads the performance of Birdy, a winner of awards overseas. The piece is an expression of the artist's inner transformation into a bird who wishes to escape from reality and chase her dreams but has to struggle for it before returning to a final state of calm. Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, founded by LIN Ting-syu (born in Kaohsiung's Dashu District), will bring us their new piece, Picking the Corpus, which looks at finding your true self and a way home. Among the thousands of choices we have in the various stages on the journey of life, the artists of this piece seek their true, current identities within their emotions and psychologies. The choreographers of these two programs, inspired by their traditional training and life experiences, are representatives of the new generation.
Everyone Can Dance: Amateurs Take the Stage
The idea behind four programs with amateur dancers came from the many years of Weiwuying 365+ Dance, a program that promotes dance among the public. The performances are allowing everyday dance-lovers a chance to get on stage with the help of professionals. FreeSteps—Swinging Years is a piece from the FreeSteps project led by Kaohsiung choreographer SU Wei-chia of HORSE. The nearly 100 senior-citizen dancers have translated their life experiences into dance movements as a unique "dance of the people."
LAI Tsui-shuang and TSO Han-chieh, who have lived in southern Taiwan for years and long been involved in collaborating with non-professionals in their work, will bring us exceptional pieces. Lais Creative Dance Theatre's Their Stories—Daylight was first created by LAI and 12 amateurs for the Taikang Cultural Center 2020-2021 Amateur Biennale Performance Project. It includes many types of performing art that relate experiences of weakness and exploration of the self by the performers with aspects of both realism and non-realism. The version made for Weiwuying will go on at Banyan Plaza, offering a different perspective.
TSO Han-chieh's Kid's Notes—My Body, My Partner looks at how children live in cities designed for adults. The challenges they face stimulated TSO to make use of physical size, sensory training, and the relationship between environment and artistic creation in coming up with a simple performance of the body.
Kaohsiung choreographer YEH Ming-hwa and the Kaohsiung City Ballet, where YEH first trained and which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, will bring us Dancing Ballet. Amateur performers of differing ages will perform with their instructors. With YEH's growth experience and contemporary artistic vision, she has produced this piece as a look at ballet in Taiwan. Performed on the Open Stage at Banyan Plaza, it will be the opening number of the Taiwan Dance Platform.
Sound and Film Dialogue with Dance
Body Online, Screendance Showcase will be presented in three exhibitions, one for films, one for the "sounds of dance," and one for photography. Dance through Films is the fruit of Weiwuying's first call to artists around the world to submit short dance films. Since submissions first started being accepted in July, we received 256 from 46 countries/regions across five continents. The juries selected ten of them, plus one more for Special Mention, to bring viewers an experience of different vocabularies of the body and the plights of people around the world. The videos will be shown in the Exhibition Hall as a means of discovering how the body converses with the stage and thinking about the long-term direction of dance's future evolution.
Dance through Sound is an audial experience of music made for dance performances by LIM Giong, WANG Yujun, LEE Shih-yang, HSU Yen-ting, and SHENG. Dance through Photography reviews dance programs that have gone on over the past two years despite Covid while introducing us to local photographers. The three exhibitions will take place in open settings through which visitors may walk freely.
Local curatorial company, Kelio Arts helped curate Body Online, Screendance Showcase with CHOU. The design for the Exhibition Hall, East Crown Terrace, and Banyan Plaza was handled by the highly experienced southern-Taiwanese stage designer LEE Wei-mu, who produced the effect of connection among these "islands" and nature.
Besides the performances and exhibitions, there will be forums on creating music for dance, the development of dance in southern Taiwan, and performing with the body in urban Taiwan, through which attendees may learn about dance in southern Taiwan based on the local dance environment and creative development. Another forum will be on the late Taipei Times editor Diane BAKER, who wrote extensively in English about dance in Taiwan.
For Art Talk Island Connection: Body Online—Curator Talk, CHOU will discuss this year's theme and share his thoughts and observations from his time as a resident artist at Weiwuying. While guiding attendees in experiencing the power of dance in southern Taiwan, he will talk about connecting the world by means of the body, share interesting stories about curating the event, and lead visitors on his own personal tour of the platform.
The 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform is a gathering of energy in southern Taiwan aimed at serving as a point of connection for contemporary dance in Asia. Weiwuying is offering two super-value ticket packages: If you purchase tickets for all four ticketed programs at one time, the price of each ticket will be slashed by 50%. If you purchase tickets for two programs at one time, the price of each ticket will be discounted by 20%. So invite your friends to come along on this golden yet rare journey of dance in southern Taiwan!
2022 Taiwan Dance Platform Schedule and Related Info
Ticketed programs
TIEN Hsiao-tzu, LEE Shih-yang, TAI Zih-ning: Liederzyklus
SU Pin-wen: Girl's Notes
Playhouse
11/11 (Fri.) 20:30
11/12 (Sat.) 19:30
WANG Yuguang, Danang PAMUNGKAS: Go to Your Island
East Crown Terrace
11/11 (Fri.) 20:30
11/12 (Sat.) 20:30
Hung Dance: Birdy
Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi: Picking the Corpus
East Crown Terrace
11/12 (Sat.) 15:00
11/13 (Sun.) 15:00
HORSE: FreeSteps—Swinging Years
Opera House
11/13 (Sun.) 15:00
Non-ticketed programs
YEH Ming-hwa and the Kaohsiung City Ballet: Dancing Ballet
Banyan Plaza
11/11 (Fri.) 19:00
TSO Han-chieh: Kid's Notes—My Body, My Partner
Banyan Plaza
11/12 (Sat.) 10:00
11/13 (Sun.) 10:00
Tjimur Dance Theatre: GO PAIWAN (highlights)
Banyan Plaza
11/12 (Sat.) 13:30
11/13 (Sun.) 13:30
Lais Creative Dance Theatre: Their Stories—Daylight
Banyan Plaza
11/12 (Sat.) 17:00
11/13 (Sun.) 17:00
Exhibitions/Forums
Body Online-Dance through Photography
Banyan Plaza (Opera House display window)
10/3 (Mon.) - 12/4 (Sun.) 11:00
Body Online-Dance through Sound
Exhibition Hall
10/22 (Sat.) - 11/20 (Sun.) 11:00
Body Online-Dance through Films
Exhibition Hall
10/22 (Sat.) - 11/20 (Sun.) 11:00
Promotional events
Art Talk Island Connection: Body Online—Curator Talk
Lecture Hall
10/22 (Sat.) 14:00
Body Online Screendance Showcase—Curator's Tour
Exhibition Hall
10/22 (Sat.) 16:00
Special offers:
- Super Savings: 50% off each of four tickets purchased at the same time for the four ticketed 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform programs.
- Discount Deal: 20% off each of two tickets purchased at the same time for two ticketed 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform programs.
*Not valid for tickets priced at NT$300 or more; not valid with any other offers.
About CHOU Shu-yi
Dancer CHOU Shu-yi began his ongoing stint as Weiwuying's first resident artist in 2020. His creative concept begins with the body while he uses dance as his language of communication with the world and looks at the relationships between people and their social environments. He enjoys being on the move as he works to bring art wherever he goes and has become deeply involved in southern Taiwan since moving here. Collaborations with Weiwuying include The Memory Overture of Strolling in the Park with Scarecrow Contemporary Dance Company, a Weiwuying-exclusive edition of Afterimage for Tomorrow with Singing CHEN, The Center with CHENG Chih-chung, Starting with the Body I, II, and III (Weiwuying 365+ Dance programs), Bolero in Kaohsiung, the CHOU Shu-yi Dance Workshop, the Bolero One-day Workshop—Finding the Dancer in You!, the dance video app Weiwuying One Minute VR Stage—Film Your Own Dance!, and the Writing About Dance Workshop.
Learn More
►For more ticketing and program information on the Taiwan Dance Platform
►Weiwuying Artist-In-Residence-CHOU Shu-yi