Festival honors Taiwan’s modern dance legend

2015/11/02

The Tsai Jui-yueh International Dance Festival is to kick off Oct. 30 in Taipei City to commemorate the life and work of Taiwan’s most renowned modern dance innovator 10 years after her death.

Staged at the Rose Historic Site, this year’s human rights-themed event features pieces by well-known choreographers Tsai Jui-yueh, Dr. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, Orita Katsuko and Eleo Pomare, hailing from Taiwan, Australia, Japan and the U.S., respectively. Together the performances will pay tribute to the late contemporary dance master over the festival's three-day run.

Ondine Shiau, chairman of event organizer Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Foundation, said Tsai was a trailblazer in the cutting-edge art form. “Her insistent devotion to dance despite suffering through a three-year prison sentence during the White Terror era [1949-1987] and a 1999 studio fire revealed her deep-seated passion and resilience for life.”

Born in 1921 in Tainan City, Tsai studied dance in Japan from the age of 16. After the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), she came back to her homeland and started teaching in Taipei City.

Her efforts have paid handsome dividends. Grace Shiau Dance Theater, founded by Grace Shiau who studied under Tsai, is set to stage the legendary choreographer’s masterpiece “Chase” on the opening day of the festival.

Originally choreographed in 1949, the piece revolves around Taiwan’s smallest indigenous group, the Thao, who according to legend discovered Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan and settled in the region while chasing a white deer. The work is also one of the first to showcase the indigenous cultures and spectacular landscape of Taiwan.

Another highlight is a reinterpretation of 1962’s “Blues for the Jungle” by Pomare. Re-choreographed by Martial Roumain, the dance depicts the history of African-Americans from the earliest days of enslavement to the fight for equal rights in the 1960s, showing the suppression and despair faced by this mistreated ethnic group.

These two dance works show the choreographers’ concern for their respective homelands. “Tsai’s caring for the island and the rights of its people persisted throughout her entire life,” chairman Shiau said. “Her spirit is expressed in her dances and we are certain to continue nurturing the rich artistic heritage she left behind.”

As for “Tango Lamen,” Dalman uses the steps to indicate the differences made by social classes and the limitations thus imposed upon the disadvantaged groups. Katsuko’s “Next Wind,” meanwhile, ponders the relationship between technology and human beings.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=238385&ctNode=2194&mp=9)