If it's spring, the sound of point shoes are sure to be filling theaters islandwide as the Russian Festival Ballet returns for what has become almost an annual rite of passage around Taiwan.
The company has developed a strong following here after more than a dozen visits. It opens its 10-performance run next Wednesday in Hsinchu County. In addition to the perennial favorites Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the company will be also performing A Midsummer Night's Dream, based on the William Shakespeare play. Taipei audiences will be able to choose from among all three, but ballet-lovers elsewhere will have to make do with just one.
The Russian Festival Ballet, formed in 1989 by premier danseur and choreographer Timour Fayziev, is filled with graduates of the Bolshoi and Stanislavski schools. Fayziev himself is a graduate of the Moscow State Academy of Choreography at the Bolshoi Theater.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BAROQUE ART
The Russian Festival Ballet is not the Kirov or the Bolshoi, but it is a strong, second-tier company. It also has the advantage of being cheaper than the big companies, with tickets starting at NT$500 and a top ticket price of NT$3,000 for Taipei, NT$2,500 elsewhere, compared to the NT$6,000 being charged for prime orchestra seats for the Kirov's visits.
That price difference is a draw, especially if you are a dance student or the parents of ballet-struck little girls who might be dreaming of the day they can don a tutu and take to the stage themselves, or a young boy who sees himself soaring across the stage in a grande jete.
Fayziev has wisely restricted the company's repertoire to a handful of traditional Russian and modern classics that audiences the world over still clamor for, including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Giselle and Don Quixote. In recent years he has added Carmen and Romeo and Juliet to the line-up. Nothing earth shattering or particularly innovative, just well known tales that require a disciplined corp de ballet, some good soloists and competent principles.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BAROQUE ART
The key to the Russian Festival Ballet's performances is their display of finely honed Russian technique — strong backs, terrific extensions — and a unity of style that comes from everyone having been taught the same way. Most of the big — and even some of the small — Western ballet companies are now filled with dancers from around the world. Great in terms of seeing terrific dancers, not so great if you are putting on a ballet that needs a unified corp for visual impact, such as Swan Lake.
Such displays of Russian virtuosity have become a staple on the calendars of local ballet aficionados, who are always hungry for more point-work, given the dominance modern dance has on Taiwan's dance scene and the paucity of local competition. The Kaohsiung City Ballet is the only Taiwanese company to perform year-round, but its well-attended annual tours alone can't fill the void.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,