Dancer/choreographer Sun Chuo-tai (孫梲泰) has been having the “times” of his life this year. All of them, almost all at once: the worst of times and the best of times. So the founder of 8213 Physical Dance Theater (8213肢體舞蹈劇場) did what any self-respecting artist would do: He made a show about it.
Sun was having a great year last year when he first came up with the idea of doing a show about turning 40 and how it makes many people take stock of their lives. He thought he would call it Midlife Crisis (四十仍惑之乎者也).
Then, in December, his father died.
Photo Courtesy of Zin Ge
Earlier this year, in fairly rapid succession, he experienced several major life events: marriage, loss of a job, learning he was going to become a father. It is easy to see why he chose an inflatable figure of Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream as a prop for the show’s promotional photographs.
However, in a telephone interview on Monday, Sun sounded surprisingly philosophical.
“This year I suffer, I feel bad; I had never had this feeling before. I always succeeded before … so I never understood this feeling,” he said. “I have grown up. I don’t like these things, but I appreciate them.”
It all began with his father’s death on Dec. 30. The elder Sun, who had been a Chinese opera performer, had been sick for about three years. His death spurred Sun to marry a Chinese woman he met in Guilin last year.
“We Chinese have some traditions, like if a parent dies, you have 100 days to marry or you have to wait a very long time, like maybe three years,” he said.
However, the day Sun brought his wife to Taiwan was the same day he was notified that the Ministry of Culture was not going to fund his company this year, leaving him, as he said, “out of job.”
‘PISSED OFF’
“My first feeling was one of relief — ‘I don’t have to practice anymore,’ but then I got pissed off. I met with a lawmaker and talked for a long time about it. I said a lot of bad words about the system, because I felt that last year I did a really good job… I went to Fiji, to India, did a lot of performances in Taiwan, did about 50 workshops around the country,” he said.
Learning that he would become a father sometime in November felt like it was just one “thing” too many, so he revamped his ideas about the show.
“This idea last year was different, the focus was memories of my past. So I changed everything,” he said. “Now I need to keep fighting to survive — I feel this time I really need to do some physical dance theater.”
While the show is physical, there is not a lot of dance in it.
“I am bringing all my gym stuff — the muscle machine, treadmill, a basketball. I am doing physical things, using my whole body. I want it to be real so you can feel my struggle. I don’t need to do fake things,” he said.
BODY WORKOUT
As a performer, turning 40 is another reminder that your body is changing, and Sun said he is no different.
“I can feel my body getting weak… I am trying to run 5km every day, swim, but my tendons, my knees, my muscles cannot handle it,” he said.
“So many people my age who work in an office, they worry about younger people taking their jobs, they have to show their bosses that they are still useful, can work as hard as young people. I am doing the same thing, telling people I can still be a dancer, a performer,” he said. “But telling is not enough, so I want to show it on stage.”
While Midlife Crisis is billed as a one-man show, Sun will be sharing the floor with musician and composer Jimi Chen (陳世興), a long-time collaborator. Sun joked that it will be Chen who is doing a live show, he will just be exercising.
“In this piece you can see weird things happen, but they are not weird for me. A lot of dance professors and critics think that I am trying to be weird, but I am not; it is just my life. It always surprises me,” he said.
Chen has learned a lot this year.
“This year for my career has been better than last year. God always gives you a joke. I have gotten more opportunities, more money, I went back to Avignon ... At first I felt like a loser, but now, in September I feel ‘wow!,’ he said. “Now I feel that if bad things happen, then I know that good things will happen.”
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS