The cultural institutes of the National Performing Arts Center in Taipei and Taichung are to present “time”-themed programs and a feast of musical events in Kaohsiung during their spring season.
In Taipei, the National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH) is to present the 16th edition of the Taiwan International Festival of Arts, exploring “the theatrical multiverse” and taking its audience to “travel through” the past, present and future, the 36-year-old arts center said.
The NTCH plans to present 14 productions between Friday next week and May 11. The first production to be staged is to be the Irish dance group Teach Damsa and its founder Michael Keegan-Dolan’s MAM on Friday next week until Monday next week.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The arts center in Taipei is also to stage from April 12 to 14 German theater group Rimini Protokoll’s This Is Not an Embassy directed by Stefan Kaegi, following its ongoing four-city premiere tour in Europe, which started during the Berliner Festspiele in the German capital late last month.
The work, performed by three Taiwanese — a former ambassador, an NGO worker and a musician from a family running the world’s largest suppliers of bubble tea-related products — was created by Kaegi after he interviewed 70 people during the two months he was artist-in-residence at NTCH, NTCH general and artistic director Liu Yi-ruu (劉怡汝) said.
To mark its 35th anniversary, Dance Forum Taipei is partnering with Dance Theatre Heidelberg to perform Firebird & Rite of Spring by the German dance group’s artistic director, Ivan Perez.
Conductor Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬) is to lead the Evergreen
Symphony Orchestra to perform the music composed by Igor Stravinsky live with the dance groups, whose performance on May 10 and 11 would conclude the arts festival.
The National Taichung Theater (NTT), which opened in 2016, said it would present the second edition of its Arts NOVA series with 11 productions from March 3 to June 9.
This year’s Arts NOVA is to open with the production of Time by Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and visual artist Shiro Takatani.
The production to conclude the NTT’s Arts NOVA is its artist-in-residence Chen Wu-kang’s (陳武康) Dance a Dance to Remember, performed by the dance group he cofounded in 2004.
The piece to be staged on June 8 and 9 is inspired by Southeast Asian ideas about death, migration and separation, the NTT said.
Meanwhile, the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, known locally as Weiwuying, is to present programs of pop and classical music.
The series of programs is to begin with the third annual edition of Masters Play, which features Mandopop songs written by Johnny Chen (小蟲), it said.
Where Chow (周蕙) is this year’s guest singer, who is to perform on Saturday and Sunday next week with the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra conducted by Chien, who is also the general and artistic director of the arts center in Kaohsiung.
Chien and the orchestra are also to perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s opera Fidelio in a concert on March 1, with an all-Taiwanese cast of singers, before Weiwuying presents its annual 24 Hours Series featuring Beethoven from 4:30pm on March 2 to 5pm on March 3.
The Kaohsiung arts center is also to host its annual Weiwuying Organ Festival from March 15 to 17, featuring the largest pipe organ in Asia, followed by the Weiwuying International Music Festival from April 12 to 21.
The arts centers in Taipei and Taichung are to jointly present the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s Lunar Halo, which was staged abroad for the first time during the dance troupe’s European tour in December.
The piece is to be staged at the National Theater in Taipei from March 7 to 10, and at the National Taichung Theater on March 23 and 24.
Meanwhile, the NTCH is to present from March 16 to 23 another work of Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, titled Kagami (“mirror” in Japanese), as a tribute to him following his death in March last year.
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