To make up for lack of genuine Can Can in the blockbuster Moulin Rouge, which refreshed people's memories of the 300-year-old performance genre, Can Can de Paris is coming to Taiwan to show their version of the sensuous French dance style. The burgeoning group of 14 American and French dancers had just had their first tour of the US in January before bringing their interesting mix of dance shows here.
Claire Duport, the group's choreographer, studied and worked in classical ballet before her enthusiasm for Can Can won out. Her previous choreography work can be seen in the 1997 French movie Lautrec, based on the life of French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who found his inspiration in Can Can dancers. Duport often tries to show the exquisiteness of French culture through exclusive use of music by French composers in her choreography pieces. Despite Can Can's ancient role as the entertainment for the working class, Duport strived to make it a refined art form.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CAN CAN DE PARIS
The show will not confine itself to Can Can but will be interspersed with stunt shows by Tina Clay, a stunt performer with Cirque de Soleil and Holiday on Ice, and other dances like quadrille, waltz and tango. Dancers will also perform a piece of zany ballet, in which male dancers in female ballet costumes provide some light-hearted humor.
Can Can de Paris is going to perform Sept. 17 at Taipei's Chungshan Hall. The show is moving on to Yuanlin the next day, back to Taipei at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall on Sept. 19, 20 and 21. After that, the show is moving to Chungli, Hsinchu, Nantou, Tainan and Kaohsiung on Sept. 24 to Sept. 27 and the weekend of Sept. 28 respectively. Tickets ranging from NT$300 to NT$2,000 are available at ERA ticketing outlets. For detailed information and ticket booking, go to www.kham.com.tw or call (07) 7403466.
Earlier this month Economic Affairs Minister Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) proposed buying green power from the Philippines and shipping it to Taiwan, in remarks made during a legislative hearing. Because this is an eminently reasonable and useful proposal, it was immediately criticized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). KMT Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡) said that Taiwan pays NT$40 billion annually to fix cables, while TPP heavyweight Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) complained that Kuo wanted to draw public attention away from Taiwan’s renewable energy ratio. Considering the legal troubles currently inundating the TPP, one would think Huang would
President William Lai’s (賴清德) National Day address was the source of far more activity and response than the speech itself warranted. The reactions to the speech and subsequent events by the local press, the international press and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mouthpieces were all very different. Michael Turton’s excellent piece, “Lai lays out the future” in the Oct. 14 edition of this paper, provided some much-needed context and a critical examination of some crucial domestic issues Lai failed to address, adding the glorious comment: “the world parses Lai’s speech like Roman priests inspecting the guts of a sacrificial animal
Last week two magnificent exhibitions opened in London. Both have as their theme the idea of the Silk Road, an-overland trade route said to stretch ever since antiquity all the way across Asia from China to Turkey and hence to Mediterranean Europe. The show at the British Library is entitled A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang and focuses on the extraordinary haul of ancient documents found in the Mogao Buddhist cave temples by a Chinese Daoist priest and sold by him to the explorer and archaeologist Aurel Stein in 1907. Its treasures include the celebrated ninth-century Diamond Sutra, the earliest
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) last week told residents to avoid wearing scary Halloween costumes on the MRT so as not to alarm other passengers. Well, I thought, so much for my plan to visit Taipei dressed as the National Development Council’s (NDC) biennial population report “Population Projections for the Republic of China (Taiwan): 2024-2070,” which came out last week. Terms like “low birth rate” and “demographic decline” do not cut it — the report is nothing short of a demographic disaster. Yet, in Taiwan, as in other countries, it is solvable. It simply requires a change in mindset. As it
RSS