Summer 2012 Ballet Review

From the Summer 2012 issue of Ballet Review

Scattered Clouds: Dance in Taipei by Joseph Houseal

Cover Photograph by Paul Kolnik, NYCB: Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild in Peter Martins’ Romeo + Juliet. 4 New York – Sandra Genter 5 Switzerland – Renée E. D’Aoust 7 Toronto – Gary Smith 8 Washington, D. C. – Lisa Traiger 10 New York – Gary Smith 12 Munich – Jay Rogoff 13 Winnipeg – Gary Smith 14 Belgrade – Milica Zajcev 15 New York – Joseph Houseal 17 San Francisco – Leigh Witchel Joel Lobenthal 36 22 A Conversation with Ib Andersen Francis Mason 34 Ethel Winter on Graham* Don Daniels 36 Discriminations: Tiler Peck’s Season Francis Mason 43 Janet Eilber on Graham* Michael Langlois 46 A Conversation with Susan Jaffe 15 Francis Mason Ballet Review 40.2 53 Benjamin Zemach on Graham* Summer 2012 Francis Mason Editor and Designer: Marvin Hoshino 54 Joseph Wiseman on Graham* Managing Editor: Francis Mason Roberta Hellman 57 Tony Randall on Graham* Senior Editor: Joseph Houseal Don Daniels 59 Scattering Clouds Associate Editor: Joel Lobenthal Harris Green 64 64 A Conversation with Sterling Hyltin Associate Editor: Larry Kaplan Francis Mason Copy Editor: 75 Anne Jackson on Graham* Barbara Palfy Francis Mason Photographers: 77 Eli Wallach on Graham* Tom Brazil Costas Janet Mansfield Soares 79 Teaching Dance Composition Associates: Peter Anastos 84 London Reporter – Clement Crisp Robert Gres kovic 93 Music on Disc – George Dorris George Jackson 100 Check It Out Elizabeth Kendall 22 Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds James Sutton Cover Photograph by Paul Kolnik, NYCB: Sterling Hyltin and David Vaughan Robert Fairchild in Peter Martins’ Romeo + Juliet. Edward Willinger Sarah C. Woodcock *Francis Mason’s interviews about Martha Graham date from the mid-1990s. Scattering Clouds It’s the source of the pervasive high quality in dance. There’s been an effort over the years, spear- headed by Lin, to educate the Taiwanese about dance, to include all forms of indigenous dance Joseph Houseal (in Taiwan there are at least ten local, non- Chinese, peoples), and to train generations of Vibrant innovation and technical excellence dancers along with the population to love and characterize the dance scene in Taipei. Recent - understand dance. ly I was honored to be a guest lecturer in the One of the professors from TNUA, Ping Dance Department of the Taipei National Uni- Heng, directs a company, Dance Forum Taipei, versity of the Arts, a curriculum originated featuring a former Trisha Brown dancer by Lin Hwai-min, director of Cloud Gate Dance now choreographer, Yang Ming-lung. He is Theater. The brilliance of this university’s bringing release technique to traditional dance department is its focus on the profes- Chinese Opera movement, both to make a new sion of dancing. Training in Peking Opera, contemporary form and to reinterpret classic Graham technique, classical ballet, aboriginal stories for today’s audiences. dance, and modern dance is required of all ma- Another group of three dancers led by Cheng jors. Because all majors at TNUA have shared Tsung-lung, inspired by Jack Kerouac, per- this basic dance training, they do not dwell on formed On the Road as an exploration of young their high level of proficiency. From an out- Taiwanese male identity. All the dancers in side perspective, this is extraordinary. the piece were TNUA graduates. Cheng is also The academic component of TNUA’s dance a choreographer for Cloud Gate 2. Both these department similarly places primacy on the performances were finalists in the prestigious profession of dance, while developing and set- Taishin Art Award; On the Road won. ting the highest academic standards for dance The Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art scholarship in Taiwan. A core team of women created a display for each performance final- professors, all with doctorates, from Taiwan, ist, based on their live performances over the the United Kingdom, and the United States year, designed to highlight the qualities that keep the topics timely, the expectations high, made them finalists. They were overseen by J. and the range of material broad. All this oc- J. Shih, the MOCA director and former Taishin curs in an environment of robust creativity Arts Award director. There was a dance ele- among faculty, guest artists, and students. ment in very nearly every entry, even among It’s probably no wonder that a place found- visual art finalists who used dance and per- ed by Lin Hwai-min would foster, train, and formance art as media. incubate some of the most interesting dance The exhibition for On the Road was designed artists today. His ability to create a truly Tai- by Chen Pin-hsiu in collaboration with the wanese identity in dance, judged on its own original stage designer, Russ Kao, and was terms, remains his cultural legacy. TNUA has made of four screens facing one another mak- since thrived on its own with superb teach- ing four walls inside of which people would ers, broad-minded scholars, and talented stu- stand. The seventy-five-minute work was dents. brilliantly shot, edited, and displayed, retain- But the figure of Lin is large on the cultur- ing salient qualities of the dance in part by al landscape and the presence he provides is having different movement on each screen. one of national cultural pride and encourage- The installation showed the charm, artistic ment, and also one demanding excellence. ease, and intellectual joy with which the Ker- While Cloud Gate is avant-garde as art, it is ouac classic influenced the entire concept and the Old Ancestor of the Taiwanese dance scene. dance. It was ambrosial.

©2012 Joseph Houseal 59 My good fortune extended all the way to the are too concerned with themselves generally. empty factory where Cloud Gate now re- It’s the fashion: they want to be pretty. Men hearses. Their former studio burned down in here used to be more raw.” 2008, and until the new one is completed, it is I protested. “Taiwanese young people are so rain on the sheet-metal roof. Lin has me sit fashionable now. It is dandyism, sure. It’s kind next to him at the table where he directs the of nice. One fellow told me that it was the mod- company. ern version of a Confucian expression: dress- I’ve seen him at work choreographing in ing up before going out, before seeing a teacher, years past, but this time he was reviving a 1993 looking groomed and showing respect.” Lin work, Nine Songs, inspired by the shamanic in- ultimately left the table and choreographed a cantations of earliest China, also called Nine new way for the young dancer to leap off the Songs. Arthur Waley did a fine translation into stilts, exude a primal solar power, and land English of the original texts. The costumes, dancing. sets, production, and lighting schematic notes Another young dancer, the tall and talent- were ruined in the fire, so this revival is also ed Yu Chien-hung, also portrayed the Sun God. a reconstruction and a new production. I went The solo is complex, spirit-like, and power- to the studio three times for two or three hours ful. It inspires awe. He is in one of three casts at a stretch in order to see the Cloud Gate for the revival. After the dance wa s complet- dancers in training by a tai chi master one day ed, Yu approached Lin’s table, panting, look- and by ballet master Graeme Collins the next. ing up at him from a lunge position, his eyes Collins, who created the ballet-training wide open and direct like a devoted student. program at the Hong Kong Academy for Per- Lin looked directly back, and proceeded to cri- forming Arts, is now ballet teacher for Cloud tique his dancing in the minutest detail and Gate and TNUA. “They don’t come with a pre- artistic depth, all the while fixed on the re- conceived notion of ballet,” he told me, “and ceptive gaze of the young dancer. they have a well-developed, very low center It reminded me of a Buddhist mind-to-mind of gravity. So ballet technique for them is all “transmission.” Yu then thanked Lin, and about body knowledge, and they know their backed away. He repeated the solo, which this bodies so well. Ballet uses a higher center of time took on a larger-than-life quality and an gravity, so these dancers get very good at work- unselfconscious display of skill. Lin said to me, ing from different centers of gravity.” “We pray to the gods. They never come. The Later, rehearsing a scene for the Sun God, gods demand sacrifice; we give them our lives. a masked dancer leapt from a pair of stilts, up- Who are these gods? But the rituals never cease. ward, falling in an arc to the ground below – I find what each dancer is open to while I am a god landing with elemental authority. It is choreographing, teaching, coaching through dangerous, and difficult. Lin was coaching the this revival. He is much better now. The ap- young and excellent dancer how to get through pearance of the god is disconcerting. Good. ” this and still be dancing while landing. The In an exquisitely beautiful scene, the earnest young man tried and tried again, nev- masked River Goddess appears as a shamanic er quite exploding in mid-air, which would trance dream, while ritual maidens evoking physically make the difficult feat simpler, ancient shapes toss flowers in the lotus pond cleaner, and more organic, counterintuitive at the front of the stage. I found the River God- as that may seem. dess the eeriest of all, an inhabited ritual “There is something about this generation shaman, borne on a rude palanquin, standing of men dancers,” Lin leaned over and said to erect, wearing the plainest of masks. In her, me. “At the end of a long day of rehearsal, they beauty and purity become frightening. The smell good.” I nodded sympathetically. “They story and tribal ritual give over to abstraction are too concerned with how they smell. They as a way for society to move forward.

60 ballet review These vestals, like those in Robbins’ Antique Focus Dance Company. That would be the Epigraphs, evoke ancient ideals through im- TNUA graduating class dance students. There agery, but Lin goes farther than Robbins, con- you’d see a slice of the employment pool. Cloud necting the modern and the ancient in real Gate employs more dancers than anyone else consequential understandings. Throughout and, sure, it is a lively, engaged dance scene the work, Magritte-like men in suits ride in with government support and promotion at on bikes, offering a modern context for the several levels, but the fact is that there are ancient sacrifices, which remain like some more qualified dancers than can be employed. psychic anchor that cannot be pulled up. An- Some smaller groups are established and there other section about the Gods of Fate – which are many performances not by companies, but could stand alone as an essay on destiny – is by artists and groups of artists. If you really brutal and brilliant. The ritual fate of people, want to see how great the training is here, go for all their piety, has often been cruel and un- to a graduation concert. predictable. Lin does not shy away from pro- “The other factor is that Taiwan is still a found questioning of human behavior. traditional culture. Your parents might let you The serial sacrifice to the gods ends, as in study dance in college, but afterward, you’d the ancient poems, with a homage to those fall- better get a real job. So, in the Focus Dance en in the name of the ancient gods. Lin up- Company, you will see dancers who have been dates this with an audioscape naming the fall- selected and will be hired by Cloud Gate, en Taiwanese from the war against the Japan- dancers who are qualified but face uncertain ese occupation: those fallen to the modern God futures, and dancers who are wonderful but of War. Chinese names. Indigenous names. are forced to stop by their families.” Endless names. For each a floating candle in a An example of just how healthy the dance bowl is brought onstage and set on the floor, scene is in Taipei can be found in 8213 Physi- making a twisting river of flickering light. cal Dance Theater, founded and directed by It is sobering to contemplate those fallen to Sun Chuo-tai. Among the other definition- the gods of war. Finally, this becomes a grand stretching performance art and movement homage to all the fallen everywhere, as the 8213 performs, it also hosts a Not Dance Festi- backdrop of the nighttime sky lights up with val, a twelve-day performance series now in uncountable stars and the river of lights flows its second year. I asked Sun about this notion, forever into infinity. In rehearsal, the piece is and he said that his original inspiration was moving and shocking, compassionate and in- people saying that they could not understand sightful. I would like to see the revival of this dance. He thought was, “But this is not dance! piece onstage. A two-year tour of this work Please come.” traveling through Asia and to Moscow and Audiences did come, and various muni- London is slated to begin in August 2012. cipal governments paid to have the festival Diane Baker is the dance writer for the Taipei travel around. Here, an excerpted evening of Times. A resident for thirty years, she has seen seven solo artists was shown. We were in Tam- the dance scene in Taiwan develop. She cred- sui, end of the line at the ocean’s edge where its the seminal role of Cloud Gate in estab- old village houses still stand, and people work- lishing a climate of creativity and originality, ing the river command the outlying area. Af- and for demonstrating that there is a Tai- ter the first piece I was a believer. Performed wanese national character in modern and con- by Chan Tien-zhen, Wearing a Nightgown was temporary dance. Rather than imported bal- an electrifying and horrifying dance-theater let reaching a kind of cultural primacy, or im- portrait of a woman who has been exposed to ported modern dance setting roots, Taiwanese the radiation of the recent Fukuyama nuclear originality instead was the fountainhead. reactor meltdown during the Japanese earth- She also noted, “You really should see the quake and tsunami. summer 2012 61 Among several scenes, two are impossible performed extensively for Chinese Opera com- to forget. In the first she is tied at the waist panies in Taiwan, including Jing Explorer The- by an enormous rope that extends offstage into atre. Although he is comfortable in edgy con- unfathomable darkness; she cannot get away temporary performances, this one was a sur- from the rope. In the other, she is washing and prise to everyone attending. endlessly washing her hands in a bowl. It was He performed Wang Zhi Jia, a new work about Not Dance but it was spellbinding, serious, and a Dan from the time of the Ming Dynasty who expressive. In an era when no one really knows was celebrated and praised onstage, but in real how to respond to such horrors, Chan has used life had no support, no money, and no posi- art to convey total compassion by revealing tion in the world. Chao Hsin sang the song in the heartbreaking, inescapable realities being authentic Kunqu style, with an electronic faced by the victims of this disaster. soundscape added that he sang against, like Choreographer and dancer Christopher Chu simultaneous bands in a Charles Ives compo- performed A Twelfth of Me, created for the orig- sition. His beautiful, elegant costume by a hot inal twelve-day festival by being a different Taiwanese fashion designer provided glam- “me” every day for the twelve days. Respond- our and line as well as a cloak of darkness and ing to the notion of Not Dance, Chu turned a shroud of despair. While it was new, he used everything toward the immediacy of the it in traditional ways, like the rhythmic un- dancer. It was completely improvisational, ac- furling of the long sleeves. companied by improvising instruments like I spoke with Chao Hsin briefly after the per- bells and bamboo flutes. The lighting design, formance, asking him where his dance train- too, was an improvisation in amber and blue. ing came into play. He answered that aside Chu is a highly accomplished dancer and prac- from his Chinese Opera studies here, he has titioner of tai chi. He made the whole event traveled to Beijing to study professionally. an ineffable artistic effusion of cosmic ener- He explained that when in Kunqu style there gy. He seemed a young Lao Tzu. is a pose struck while holding or delivering At one point, sliding open the large deliv- certain notes, he would extend and stretch out ery door at the back of stage to reveal the Tam- the poses into much deeper backbends and sui River below flowing out to the sea, Chu more dramatic figures on the stairway, for ex- stood teetering, absorbed, moonstruck (for the ample. moon was reflected in the water and the com- Indeed, during the backbend he performed merce of Taipei was all twinkling lights). while delivering a piercing note of despair, his Something heady and atmospheric was oc- back arch was so deep as he twisted to face the curring and the entire audience fell into a kind audience that his face was nearly upside down. of peaceful atmospheric connection with the It was porcelain, raw pain, universal. No par- moon and the breeze. Then somehow, Chu was ticular foreknowledge was needed to compre- gone. The stage with its open back door and hend what was going on with the tragic per- amber sheaths of light had kept us all mes- former. Pure art that reached all. merized. The evening closed with 227 choreographed Next came a “Dan,” a female impersonator by an American, Casey Avant, who completed in the classical Kunqu Opera style of singing her master’s degree at TNUA after working and dancing, the oldest extant style of Chinese with Yunyu Wang in Colorado. It is a “man- opera. Chao Hsin is a dance major Ph.D. stu- vs-the system” piece, in the vein of Chaplin’s dent at National Central University of Taiwan. Modern Times. She had this to say: “227 is a He performs Peking and Kunqu Opera, spe- twelve-minute solo performed by Sun Chuo- cializing in Dan roles. In 2012 he received a tai and examines the male perspective as be- prestigious award from CCTV in Mainland ing suppressed by society and the typical work China for his performance of Qian-dan. He has environment.

62 ballet review The piece begins with a man wearing a suit ing as art, in which I’ve not seen such mas- and holding a briefcase. He hears the number tery since a sixty-seven-year old cowgirl drag 227 called by an authoritative voice and enters queen in Portland downed eight shots of bour- from downstage. The man is given orders in bon while lip-synching to “Bang Bang.”) It was both Chinese (female) and English (male), and not dance, but it was also excellent dancing by he readily complies. While some of the com- Sun Chuo-tai, the inspired leader behind 8213 mands are easily understandable, some are Physical Dance Theater. more absurd. My final day in Taipei, I returned again to “At one point the voice orders the man to Cloud Gate’s studio where Lin was rehearsing dance but is subsequently displeased and re- a young man, Chen Wei-an, in the role of the quests another movement style. A table and Cloud God in Nine Songs. Remarkably, this solo chair appear, as well as a bottle of beer, which is done entirely on the shoulders of two oth- the voice orders him to drink. The music then er dancers moving around the stage, as if the changes to cliché bar music, and the man is “god” is walking on air. Even a run-through made to feel as if he can enjoy the moment where the dancer performed as if he were on and relax. The man is finally ordered to get others’ shoulders was airily done by planting into an empty box, as the final word is the his legs with the force of great trees and there- voice requesting number 228, indicating that by affording his body total freedom of ex- the man was simply a number, reducible to a pression. It was transporting and a technical box.” feat bordering on virtuosity. I went over to the In one wonderful not-dance scene, Sun young man afterward to compliment his ex- drinks an entire bottle of beer without stop- ceptional dancing. Lin Hwai-min was right. ping, exactly timed to one whole song. (Drink- He did smell good.

summer 2012 63