Taiwanese choreographer Allen Yu (余能盛) has developed a reputation as something of a marathon man, not for his running prowess, but for his year-round work schedule.
For more than a decade, he has spent his vacations from the Graz Opera House in Austria, where he is deputy ballet director and choreographer, back in Taiwan to cast and mount new productions for his Chamber Ballet Taipei (台北室內芭蕾舞團). It is an exhausting lifestyle, but Yu seems to thrive on it.
He says that he finished his last piece in Austria on June 28, flew back to Taiwan the next day and began work on June 30.
Photo Courtesy of Chamber Ballet Taipei
“The [August] 17 is the last performance in Taipei. After the matinee I go straight to airport to fly back to Austria. I have already spent all my holiday time,” Yu said in a telephone interview from Greater Tainan on Wednesday night.
After last year’s massive Swan Lake and Giselle in 2011, Yu has pared things down this year, opting to go the neoclassical route by restaging Le Sacre du Printemps, which he first created for the company in 2009, and pairing it with a new dance, The First Day (第一天), which is set to Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, the New World Symphony.
“I don’t always want to always do the same thing,” Yu said.
Traveling back and forth between Taiwan and Austria over the years has given Yu something of an outsider’s view of Taiwan, leaving him wondering about what many people here take for granted, such as the proliferation of bars on apartment balconies and windows and the lack of windows.
“Just the front and back of apartments have windows. In Europe, people would not live like that,” he said, adding a while later: “There are ‘jail’ houses everywhere. I cannot understand why [because] Taiwan is very safe.”
So for this year’s production, he decided to focus on some of the things that he sees in Taiwan that he thinks are a bit strange.
The First Day shows humans at the start of life, with the main character having to struggle out of a forest made of black plastic, he said. It ends with the dancers walking into a bright light, walking into the future, he said.
“It is so sunshiny, so romantic,” he said.
Le Sacre du Printemps is much darker. Instead of a primitive society and ritual sacrifice, Yu’s version sees modern-day Taiwanese as the sacrificial victims.
“In this society most people are already the sacrifice, but they don’t know it,” he said. “People are good, but so stressed.”
While Yu admitted that it would be more logical to start with Sacre and save The First Day for the second half, he said he and conductor Jeppe Moulijn decided it would be better to leave Sacre for last, to leave some questions for audience to think about when they go home.
Moulijin was also concerned that the dancers have to work so hard in Sacre that they would not have any energy left over if it was performed first, Yu said.
Yu is using 26 dancers in this year’s production, including Romanian dancers Cristina Dijmaru, Valentin Stoica and Bordan Canila, who danced the lead roles in Swan Lake, whom he wanted to work with again.
“They worked so well with me and our dancers last year,” he said.
The company will be performing with the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (長榮交響樂團) for its shows in Greater Taichung and Taipei, conducted by Moulijn.Tickets are going fast for the three Taipei shows, which begin on Aug. 15. The first night’s show is already sold out.
March 10 to March 16 Although it failed to become popular, March of the Black Cats (烏貓進行曲) was the first Taiwanese record to have “pop song” printed on the label. Released in March 1929 under Eagle Records, a subsidiary of the Japanese-owned Columbia Records, the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) lyrics followed the traditional seven characters per verse of Taiwanese opera, but the instrumentation was Western, performed by Eagle’s in-house orchestra. The singer was entertainer Chiu-chan (秋蟾). In fact, a cover of a Xiamen folk song by Chiu-chan released around the same time, Plum Widow Missing Her Husband (雪梅思君), enjoyed more
Last week Elbridge Colby, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defense for policy, a key advisory position, said in his Senate confirmation hearing that Taiwan defense spending should be 10 percent of GDP “at least something in that ballpark, really focused on their defense.” He added: “So we need to properly incentivize them.” Much commentary focused on the 10 percent figure, and rightly so. Colby is not wrong in one respect — Taiwan does need to spend more. But the steady escalation in the proportion of GDP from 3 percent to 5 percent to 10 percent that advocates
A series of dramatic news items dropped last month that shed light on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attitudes towards three candidates for last year’s presidential election: Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), Terry Gou (郭台銘), founder of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), and New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It also revealed deep blue support for Ko and Gou from inside the KMT, how they interacted with the CCP and alleged election interference involving NT$100 million (US$3.05 million) or more raised by the
More than 100,000 people were killed in a single night 80 years ago yesterday in the US firebombing of Tokyo, the Japanese capital. The attack, made with conventional bombs, destroyed downtown Tokyo and filled the streets with heaps of charred bodies. The damage was comparable to the atomic bombings a few months later in August 1945, but unlike those attacks, the Japanese government has not provided aid to victims and the events of that day have largely been ignored or forgotten. Elderly survivors are making a last-ditch effort to tell their stories and push for financial assistance and recognition. Some are speaking
RSS