The Novel Hall Dance series is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with an eclectic program that spans the world music and dance genres.
It was always going to be hard to top last year’s program — the astounding visit by the Paul Taylor Dance Company in October — but for sheer diversity, this series’ line-up may excel. There is a pair of New York-based Japanese modern dancers working with a troupe of young Cambodian artists, an award-winning British choreographer’s fast-moving dance troupe and a very young (13) flamenco prodigy.
“Mr Lin [Hwai-min (林懷民), founder and artistic director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and Novel Hall Dance] said the focus this year was on ‘young, new and tomorrow,’” said Elaine Huang (黃麗宇), public relations manager of Novel Hall in a telephone interview. “So the Cambodian students with Eiko and Koma represent the young, Wayne McGregor represents the new and El Yiyo will certainly have many tomorrows.”
Huang also said it was appropriate to open this year’s series with the renowned performance duo Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake, since they had been in the series’ inaugural program.
Eiko and Koma have been breaking barriers since they met as university students in Tokyo when they joined the Tatsumi Hijikata company in 1971 and left their law and political science studies behind.
They quickly formed an exclusive partnership and began performing in Tokyo before moving to Germany to study modern dance with Manja Chmiel. They used Amsterdam as a base to tour Europe for a few years before settling down in New York. Over their careers they have incorporated video, musicians, paintings and landscape into their works, and developed a reputation for outdoor performances, all in an effort to break through the confines of traditional theater and reach a wider audience.
They have collected numerous fellowships, performance awards and other honors and in 1996 they became the first partnership to be awarded one of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowships.
In 2004, Eiko and Koma began what has become a very fruitful collaboration with students and graduates of the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a nongovernmental organization. They had been invited to the school after one of its founders saw them perform in New York.
A month-long workshop at the school led to the creation of Cambodian Stories: An Offering of Painting and Dance, which premiered in 2006, and Cambodian Stories Revisited in 2007.
In Cambodian Stories, the pair perform with young Cambodian painters and dancers to a score by Cambodian-American musician Sam-Ang Sam that mixes Cambodian popular songs and instrumental music.
The piece opens with a bare stage covered in sand, decorated with panels of traditional Cambodian dancers and strung with blank canvases. The young dancer/artists create their own landscape as they tell a story about their lives, love and painting.
From Cambodia, the Novel Hall Dance series moves to contemporary British dance, with McGregor’s Random Dance troupe performing Entity from May 22 to May 24, and finishes up with El Yiyo in New Flamenco Generation from June 5 to June 7.
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong ship, Shunxin-39, was identified as the ship that had cut telecom cables on the seabed north of Keelung. The ship, owned out of Hong Kong and variously described as registered in Cameroon (as Shunxin-39) and Tanzania (as Xinshun-39), was originally People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged, but changed registries in 2024, according to Maritime Executive magazine. The Financial Times published tracking data for the ship showing it crossing a number of undersea cables off northern Taiwan over the course of several days. The intent was clear. Shunxin-39, which according to the Taiwan Coast Guard was crewed
RSS