TAIWAN'S TAI-GU TALES DANCE THEATER

by Caroline Herrick

The opening of The Life of Mandala contains all the signature elements of Taiwanese dancer Lin Hsiu-Wei's choreography. A male dancer, who happens to be Lin's husband, Wu Hsing-Kuo, enters the darkened stage in silence, his body illuminated by the candle he carries. He then begins a slow chant. It is not until after several minutes, when the lights gradually come up, that one realizes he is not alone on stage. Behind him are a row of eight dancers each wrapped, mummy-like, in gauzy fabric. The fabric covers their faces, as well as their bodies,

Part One of The Life of Mandala (photograph courtesy of Tai-gu Tales Dance Theater)

The Life of Mandala, which had its New York premier at the Joyce Theater in early February, was the first dance Lin Hsiu-Wei choreographed for the Tai-gu Tales Dance Theater, the company she founded in Taipei 1988. The ninety-minute dance, which is performed without intermission, had already been presented to audiences in Taiwan, France, Germany, and Holland, as well as at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina, to critical and popular acclaim, before being chosen by the Joyce for the company's first appearance on its stage. The inspiration for the work, and the impetus for Lin to start her own company, was the tragic death of a friend—a young stage designer who fell from a lighting truss as he was setting up for a production by Contemporary Legend Theater, a theater company founded by Lin's husband.

Lin Hsiu-Wei and Wu Hsing-Kuo, who were married in 1980, met when they were both principal dancers with Cloud Gate Dance Theater, often referred to as Asia's leading

contemporary-dance company. The multitalented Wu, recognized as one of the leading Peking opera performers of his generation, left Cloud Gate in the early 1980s to join a Peking opera troupe and then, in 1986, founded his own company, which uses the style and techniques of Peking opera to present adaptations of Western classical plays, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Medea. Lin and Wu, who are in their early forties, are a formidable team: she is a producer for Contemporary Legend Theater, and he is not only principal dancer but also artistic advisor for his wife's company. Lin describes the death of their friend and colleague as a defining moment in their lives, a moment that changed their fundamental attitudes and outlook. To find solace and meaning after such a tragedy, she turned to her parents' religion, Buddhism, and also began to read Indian philosophy and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.

Lin Hsiu-Wei (photo by Caroline Herrick)

The Life of Mandala is divided into four parts, each of which explores one of the states the voyager through life, in this case performed by Wu Hsing-Kuo, must pass through. The first part, "Sublimation," depicts waiting for birth or rebirth. When I asked Lin which, during an

interview in New York two days before the opening performance at the Joyce, she replied, "Both." Wu moves among the mummy-like dancers as they slowly emerge from the shadows and come to life in what seems like a primordial awakening, only to fade gradually into darkness again. The second part, entitled "The World of Desires," explores sexual desire, from chaste attraction to unbridled lust. At one point, as Lin lies spread-eagle on her back—a pose that while suggestive does not, in this context, seem vulgar—Wu regally glides toward her as if being pulled across the stage by an invisible string; when he reaches her, he bows down

Wu Hsing-Kuo and Lin Hsiu-Wei in The Life of Mandala (photograph by David Tsai)

reverentially to her seemingly lifeless form before lifting her onto his back and carrying her away. In another sequence, male and female dancers (there are twelve dancers in the company, including Lin and Wu) are paired together in Bosch-like contortions, the man in each pair on his hands and knees, the woman facing the opposite direction, with her legs entwined through her partner's thighs and round his waist, her hands holding onto her partner's ankles. They move around the stage intertwined, looking like some strange kind of animal. Lin and the other female dancers use their long hair—which often completely covers their faces—to great effect, looking at times like seductresses, at times like vixens. Some of the movements are informed by Western dance, others by Chinese opera techniques, as one would expect of a company whose female members have studied modern dance, and whose male dancers have been trained in the acrobatics of traditional Chinese opera. The dance also seems to include yoga postures (the headstand and the child's pose, for example); however, although Lin says that she has studied and incorporated into her dances taiqi, kongfu, Chinese opera, classical ballet, and Martha Graham techniques, she denies having added yoga to the mix.

In conversation, Lin often uses the term "childlike" to describe the movements in her choreography. Perhaps the word is apt for someone who started out as a self-taught dancer, who during her childhood in Keelung, a port some twenty miles northeast of Taipei, loved nothing more than to create dances for herself and her friends, and who passed the entrance exam for the dance department at Taipei's Chinese Cultural College by performing a dance of

her own design, despite never having taken any dance classes, wearing a costume she made herself. Lin Hsui-Wei began her formal dance training when she entered the college at the age of fifteen. There she studied under Lin Hwai-min, founder of the Cloud Gate Dance Theater (the two dancers are not related). Lin Hwai-min had recently returned from the United States, where he had studied under Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and was just setting up his company. By her third year in college, Lin Hsui-Wei had been invited to join Cloud Gate. She remained with the company for ten years, from 1976 to 1986, becoming a principal dancer, choreographer, and rehearsal mistress. In 1986, Lin received a Fulbright

Lin Hsiu-Wei and Wu Hsing-Kuo demonstrating a movement (photograph by Caroline Herrick)

Scholarship to study in United States. While in this country, she was invited to spend six weeks at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, as an international choreographer. During one of the workshops, led by Japanese dancers Eiko and Koma, the participants were asked to go out and find a spot in the woods where they were to spend the afternoon doing whatever they pleased. When Lin went into the woods, she wanted to dance but found that she no longer knew how to move spontaneously in nature. The realization that her professional dance training was inhibiting her from dancing freely, the way she had when she was a child, impelled her to explore how she could develop what she refers to as her "own physical language." As a result, she choreographed Nu Wa (Mother Earth), a work that was well received when she performed it for her teachers at the festival. When Lin was invited to study in the United States, she thought it might be an opportunity for her to join an American dance company; but when her teachers saw Nu Wa, they advised her that her talents would be put to better use if she were to return to Taiwan and set up her own company.

The third part of The Life of Mandala, although entitled "Awakening," actually seems to be about death and is, again, performed mostly in darkness. In one of the more memorable sequences in this section, each of the male dancers, in turn, falls backward from a standing position flat onto his back. The final section, "Buddhist Chanting," is the only one that takes place in the light—in fact, the subtitle is "The light of heaven penetrates our hearts and our mind"—and represents Nirvana, or the joy that supersedes suffering. The dancers wear

Part Four of The Life of Mandala (photograph courtesy of Tai-gu Tales Dance Theater)

bright, pink and white gowns with long, flowing sleeves, and the movements are much more ethereal than in the previous sections.

The costumes for The Life of Mandala were designed by Yip Kam-Tim, also known as

Timmy Yip, the costume designer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (for which he received an Academy Award nomination). The lively, eclectic score, composed by Shih Chieh-Yun, incorporates a number of different musical styles, including gamelan, tabla, and sequences with a distinctly African beat. Lin choreographed the entire dance before commissioning Shih to write the music. Lin says she often finds music distracting when choreographing, and when she returned to Taiwan from America in 1987, she choreographed a duet without music, The Myth of the Late 20th Century, which she and Wu perform in silence.

Wu Hsing-Kuo and Lin Hsiu-Wei in their Taipei studio (photograph by Caroline Herrick)

Through their respective companies, Lin Hsiu-Wei and Wu Hsing-Kuo are contributing to Taipei's thriving art scene by creating art forms that appeal to "the man on the street," as well as to more sophisticated audiences. Tai-gu Tales Dance Theater is one of a growing number of companies in which influences from East and West are being reexamined and incorporated into distinctive, original forms of artistic expression. The Life of Mandala is just one of the eleven productions in the company's repertoire, and is one of three—the other two are The Back of Beyond and Obsession of the Stone—that have been presented to audiences outside of Taiwan to date. The company is drawing enthusiastic young audiences into Taiwan's theaters, and as its international reputation grows, one can only hope that audiences abroad will have the opportunity see a broader range of works from its repertoire.

The Tai-gu Tales Dance Theater performs in Taipei and on tour throughout Taiwan. It will tour Canada in 2004, appearing at the National Arts Center in Ottawa on January 30 and 31, and at the Harborfront Center in Toronto from February 3 to 7. Additional performances at the Centre Pierre-Péladeau in Montreal from February 12 to 14 are in the planning stages.