A story of hope
Cloud gate Dance Theatre’s highly-acclaimed Formosa is inspired by the landscape and history of Taiwan while also reflecting on universal human experiences.
CLANS fighting. People divided. Differing ideologies. Strained relationships. All this strife flaring up in a beautiful country. Sounds familiar?
For starters, this isn’t a commentary about Malaysia Baru but rather it’s a case of similar political and social state of affairs found in Taiwan.
So, it would be no surprise then that regular Malaysians, those of us who are united in our diversity, would find solace in Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s
Formosa when it opens at Istana Budaya in Kuala Lumpur on March 16.
KL will be Formosa’s only SouthEast Asian stop before its Russian tour in June.
Formosa, which made headlines around the world and recently won the Stef Stefanou Award for Outstanding Company at the 19th National Dance Award in Britain, is visionary Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-min’s final love letter to his beloved homeland that is deeply personal, poetic and meditative.
Lin is set to retire next year after this Formosa tour series.
Formosa, which means beautiful, is what 16th century Portuguese sailors exclaimed when they saw the land that would be known as Taiwan.
Lin, a treasured national icon in Taiwan and very much a patriarch of Asian contemporary dance, shares excitedly over a recent phone conversation from Taipei that although Formosa is essentially about “beauty, the construction of beauty and the ruin of beauty”, it is also very much a reflection on the conflict and divide that shaped Taiwan, something that audiences
around the world latched on to as their own nation’s narrative.
“In the United States, the people said, ‘Oh, that is us after Trump entered the White House’ or the British said ‘That’s what we are because of Brexit’. Chaos, confrontation – these are universal themes. Every place in the world has this,” says the 72-year-old Lin, who founded Cloud Gate in 1973.
Compared to his earlier masterpiece called Legacy (1978) which was a straightforward narrative of Taiwan’s history, Formosa is more of a reflective work on the Taiwan of today by an elder artist who played a crucial role in the search of a Taiwanese identity in the 1970s.
Formosa is presented in collaboration with Malaysia’s Hands Percussion and Inxo Arts And Culture Foundation and is part of the Taiwanese government’s efforts to strengthen ties with Malaysia under its New Southbound Policy.
And if the hit run in Taiwan when it premiered at Taipei’s National Theatre in 2017 and the critically acclaimed tours across Europe and the United States are anything to go by, theatre fans here can expect to be dazzled with amazing choreography and heart pumping music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, Taiwanese musician Liang Chun-mei and award-winning indigenous Taiwanese singer Sangpuy Katatepan Mavaliyw of the Puyuma people.
Mainly, Formosa is set to readings of contemporary Taiwanese poetry and literature about the island read by poet and calligrapher Chiang Hsun.
Lin, a recipient of the 2013 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement, and his research team spent a long time collecting material for this production.
Lin likens his creative process to an adventure into the jungle.
“You don’t know what you will encounter. You sense and you smell some wonderful fragrance beyond the jungle.
“So you set into exploring the path, trying to reach the fragrance. The end result is the map of my adventure, trying to find my way out,” Lin explains.
Besides acting as the narration to the 75-minute piece, these words also act as visual landscapes with Chinese characters projected onto the stage, thanks to the splendid projection design by award-winning multimedia artist and director Chou Tung-Yen and his team.
“This long collaboration started without music or even the dancers which is impossible to imagine in any other dance performances. This is the first time we tried to work on a project with this approach,” says Chou, who was in KL early January.
But this is not just any ordinary projection job. Lin had something astounding in mind.
“He said he wanted to see (an) earthquake and a black sun. He wanted to see broken words and big chunks of words hitting people like a stone,” says Chou, 37, whose works include Interchangeable
Cities (2017) and Chronicle Of Light
Year (2018).
These words, Chou says, take a life of their own on stage, shrinking and growing and crash landing like bombs.
Indeed, the dance of the typefaces, falling like rain drops or morphing into abstract forms or even collapsing ominously onto each other is something to behold. The projection design in
Formosa earned Chou a Knight Of Illumination (KOI) Award in 2018 for Best Projection Design. The KOI Awards is organised by Londonbased Fifth Estate to celebrate international lighting, projection and video design works in Britain.
To Lin, every place has its own roots and history. Be it Taipei or Kuala Lumpur.
“That’s when these words and characters come in because words and written language are used to communicate, to document, to record. But then records can be erased and history can be rewritten. Which is why at the end of the show, it’s just a white background. It’s empty,” says Lin.
Formosa may be Lin’s swansong before he passes the baton to Cloud Gate 2’s artistic director Cheng Tsung-Lung in 2020 but the idea of retirement hasn’t sunk in for the elder artist.
“I’m so busy, there’s always work ahead. I haven’t had the time to sit down and contemplate the
meaning of retirement,” shares Lin, saying he’d just completed directing an opera.
“But I am a little bit scared because this is the only thing I know how to do,” he reveals.
One thing is certain. He wants to see evolution. Despite his many years of growing and sculpting contemporary dance in Taiwan, he insists that the next generation take things to the next level.
“I don’t want to see Cloud Gate becoming a museum company. I want to see younger choreographers doing their own thing and take the next step to bring dance forward in Taiwan,” he concludes. Formosa
is on at Panggung Sari, Istana Budaya in Kuala Lumpur on March 16 and 17. Showtimes: 8.30pm (March 16) and 3pm (March 17). Tickets range between RM98 and RM468. More info: airasiaredtix. com.