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

In today's world, our hands are often confined to swiping on screens, typing on keyboards, making hand hearts, or holding beverages. But hands are more than an everyday tool–they can come to life and become the spotlight on stage. In Kiss & Cry, the first-of-its-kind production by Belgium's contemporary dance company Astragales, fingers tango, ice skate, swim, and even crawl across a beach like tiny monsters. Hands are no longer mere body parts but independent characters brimming with life.

Two dancers stand side by side at a table, each using just two fingers to enact a tender duet. The camera zooms in to capture every nuanced movement, projecting the dance onto a large screen on stage. Audiences can choose to perceive the performers' full-body presence or focus on the intimate finger duo dance on screen. The duet, performed to HANDEL's aria "Lascia ch'io pianga," evokes the sweetness of a first meeting, tentative flirtation, and the magnetic pull of romance, culminating in a poetic union. 

This was the first duo dance of Kiss & Cry. The production blends object theater with live video projection, creating a rich, multi-sensory experience. Creators Michèle Anne DE MEY and Jaco VAN DORMAEL, who are partners in both life and art, weave intricate layers of storytelling into the production. Inspired by playful moments with their daughters' toys on the kitchen table, they have crafted a piece that balances theatrical immediacy with cinematic magic.

Through object arrangements, cinematic transitions, sound effects, and stagecraft, Kiss & Cry unfolds a woman's five love stories. The music features a medley of opera, an American ballad, and vintage Shanghai melodies, while the scenes shift between evocative settings like trains, beaches, stations, ballroom, and a double bed. Sometimes playful, sometimes melancholic, the finger dances reflect the emotional arcs of each love story, allowing audiences to intuitively grasp the plot development despite the absence of dialogues or facial expressions. Nonetheless, the show does include occasional voiceovers, which have been performed in nine different languages to date, depending on the countries where the show is performed. For this Taiwan tour, a Mandarin version will be presented.

This tour marks the creative team's second visit to Weiwuying, following their widely acclaimed production, Cold Blood, in 2021. Critic WU Cheng-han commented that "under the choreography of Michèle Anne DE MEY, hands replace the human form as the focal point of dance, overflowing with creativity and enriched with diverse audiovisual elements. This creates a surreal world that is both dreamlike and real, infused with a romantic and whimsical charm." Kiss & Cry, first performed in 2011, has captivated audiences worldwide with over 300 performances, earning rave reviews from the media for its groundbreaking artistry. The Independent praised that "the precision is delightful, from hand body language to the elaborate processes needed to set up a romantic tracking shot." The Boston Globe called it "a ravishing blend of film and theater."

We invite you to step away from your screens and into the theater, to experience the passage of time alongside the performers. Kiss & Cry will take you on a journey crafted by hand, where the pulse of life and love beats at its core.

  Pre-talk  

2025/10/18(Sat)14:00 Playhouse 2F Lobby

2025/10/19(Sun)14:00 Playhouse 2F Lobby

  Post-talk  

2025/10/19(Sun)15:45 5 mins after the performance at Playhouse Auditorium

  Creative and Production Team  

Choreography & NanoDanses｜Michèle Anne DE MEY, Gregory GROSJEAN

Directed and Written by｜Jaco VAN DORMAEL

Text｜Thomas GUNZIG

Lighting Design｜Nicolas OLIVIER

Set Design｜Sylvie OLIVÉ

Sound Design｜Dominique WARNIER, Boris CEKEVDA

  Team Introduction  

Choreography & NanoDanses｜Michèle Anne DE MEY

Belgian choreographer Michèle Anne DE MEY (Brussels, 1959) attended Mudra, the Brussels-based school founded by Maurice BÉJART from 1976 to 1979. She choreographed her first show, Passé Simple, in 1981, giving contemporary dance a new direction she subsequently followed with the two-handers Ballatum (1984) and Face à Face (1986).

In 1983, she became one of the four founding members of the Rosas Company. She spent six years working on devising and staging several works by Anne Teresa DE KEERSMAEKER, including Fase (1982), Rosas danst Rosas (1983), Elena's Aria (1984) and Ottone, Ottone (1988). Although Michèle Anne DE MEY focuses on the connection between dance and music, the choreography of her productions always has a strong drama content and places the dancer in a specific and innovative relationship between stage and audience.

In 1990, while staging Sinfonia Eroica, she set up her own company, Astragale. There followed thirty or so productions that enjoyed international success. Among them were Châteaux en Espagne (1991), Pulcinella (1994), Love Sonnets (1994), Cahier (1995), Katamenia (1997), Utopie (2001), Raining Dogs (2002) and 12 Easy Waltzes (2004). Michèle Anne DE MEY has also done important teaching work (in Amsterdam, at INSAS in Brussels, at CNDC in Angers and at the École en Couleurs, also in Brussels).

Her work as a choreographer has led to several films being made, including Love Sonnets and 21 Études à Danser by Thierry DE MEY, and Face à Face by Eric PAUWELS. Devising her choreography from powerful music by reputable composers, she has also worked with Robert WYATT and Jonathan HARVEY. For many years now she has been forging close work partnerships with other artists, like visual artist and scenographer Simon SIEGMANN, Transquinquennal group member Stéphane OLIVIER and Grégory GROSJEAN with whom she staged the two-hander 12 Easy Waltzes. In 2006, she revived Sinfonia Eroica, one of her landmark shows from the 1990s, a successful, irreverent and cheerful spectacle to the soundtrack of BEETHOVEN's Eroica Symphony. This production has been staged more than a hundred times all over the world since then. In 2007, she staged P.L.U.G., which deals with the mechanics of mating and, in 2009, the one-person show Koma at the Made in Korea festival started by BOZAR. This one-person show is one of a series of four, with the other three being by Sidi Larbi CHERKAOUI, Arco RENZ and Thomas HAUERT. In 2009, she also devised Neige, using BEETHOVEN's Symphony No. 7, an atmospheric sequel to Sinfonia Eroica. On the occasion of the VIA 2011 festival, she staged the première of Kiss & Cry, alongside Jaco VAN DORMAEL and in a team with Grégory GROSJEAN, Thomas GUNZIG, Julien LAMBERT, Nicolas OLIVIER and Sylvie OLIVÉ. In May 2012, she presented Lamento, a one-person show devised for and performed by dancer Gabriella IACONO, inspired by MONTEVERDI's Lamento d'Arianna.

Kiss & Cry was a great success, playing 300 performances in 9 different languages in twenty or so countries, and was seen by over 180,000 audience members. After this, Michèle Anne DE MEY and her team of talented designers devised Cold Blood within the context of Mons as European Capital of Culture in 2015, and this show has enjoyed the same worldwide success as Kiss & Cry.

Subsequently, Michèle Anne DE MEY stepped down as director of Charleroi Danses and restarted her company, Astragales. In October 2016, at the Théâtre National, she devised Amor, a poetical, powerful show in which, alone on the stage, Michèle Anne conveyed her own, intimate near-death experiences.

In 2019, at Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège, she choreographed ballet extracts for a new version of VERDI's Aida, directed by Stefano MAZZONIS DI PRALAFERA. She was assisted by Fatou TRAORÉ and worked with dancers and circus performers.

Directed and Written by｜Jaco VAN DORMAEL

Jaco VAN DORMAEL was born on 9 February 1957 in Ixelles, Belgium and spent part of his childhood in Germany. After studying film at Louis-Lumière in Paris and INSAS in Brussels, he became a children's theatre director and clown. He has written and directed several fictional short films and documentaries–Maedeli-la-brèche (1980), Stade (1981), L'imitateur (1982), Sortie de secours (1983), È pericoloso sporgersi (1984) and De Boot (1985)–before going on to write and direct three feature length films: Toto the Hero (1991) with Michel BOUQUET which won a Caméra d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, The Eighth Day with Pascal DUQUENNE and Daniel AUTEUIL (1996) which won the best actor prize (ex æquo) at Cannes, and Mr. Nobody ( 2009) with Jared LETO, Sarah POLLEY, Diane KRUGER and Lin Dan PHAM which won a prize at the Venice Film Festival and three prizes at the Magrittes awards ceremony (best film, best director and best original screenplay), as well as the Audience Prize at the European Film Awards.

Jaco VAN DORMAEL has also directed for theatre, including Est-ce qu'on ne pourrait pas s'aimer un peu? with Eric DE STAERKE. In 2012 he directed his first opera, Stradella by César FRANCK, to mark the reopening of Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège. In the dreamy atmosphere of his productions, Jaco VAN DORMAEL explores the power of the imagination and the contribution of childhood. In less than thirty years he has developed a poetic and ambitious world of his own with non-linear narrative forms. He lives with the choreographer Michèle Anne DE MEY and has two daughters, Alice and Juliette. His brother Pierre VAN DORMAEL (1952-2008) was a composer and jazz guitarist.

Text｜Thomas GUNZIG

Thomas GUNZIG was born in Brussels in 1970 and graduated with a degree in political science (international relations). He embarked on his writing career with a collection of short stories entitled Situation instable penchant vers le mois d'août which won the City of Brussels student writer's prize in 1994. This was the first of many publications and literary awards. His writing has since diversified, from short stories to a novel (Mort d'un parfait bilingue, Rossel Prize 2001) and from radio fiction to a book for young people (Nom de code: Superpouvoir, 2005), by way of musical theatre (Belle à mourir, staged at Le Public in 1999). He also worked with Jaco VAN DORMAEL, Harry CLEVENS and COMÈS on a film adaptation of the comic strip Silence in 2006. His works have been adapted for the stage in France and Belgium. In 2008, he trod the boards himself for the first time in his own play Les Origines de la vie, which he directed with Isabelle WERY. His Spiderman has also been adapted for the screen by Christophe PERIÉ in a Jan KOUNEN production. His books have been translated into several languages, including German, Russian, Italian and Czech. There is also an educational dimension to Thomas GUNZIG's work as he regularly runs writing workshops and gives lectures in Belgium and abroad. He also gives classes on literature at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels (La Cambre) and on storytelling at the Institut Supérieur Saint-Luc in Brussels.

©Maarten Vanden Abeele