ABSTRACT
The repertoire of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan and its founder/ artistic director Lin Hwai-min reflects the changing status of Taiwan over the past three decades. Lin Hwai-min’s early work, Tale of the White Serpent (1975), embodied two sources of influence: Martha Graham’s modern dance technique and Peking Opera movements. In 1978, due to the emergence of a Taiwanese consciousness, Lin created Legacy – an epic dance piece depicting the history of Taiwan’s early immigrants from China. By the 1980s, Cloud Gate’s choreographies contemplated the rapid urbanization of Taipei. The Rite of Spring, Taipei, 1984 (1984) constitutes a commentary both on the original choreography to Stravinsky’s music by Vaslav Nijinsky, as well as that by Pina Bausch. Recently, Cloud Gate’s dances have been influenced by taichi and other Chinese martial arts. Starting with Moon Water (1998) and followed by the Chinese calligraphy-inspired Cursive Trilogy (Cursive 2001, Cursive II 2003 and Wild Cursive 2005), Lin Hwai-min re-examines the aesthetics of modern dance. Amid a continuing quest for Taiwanese identity, where there is a constant struggle between global/local and modern/traditional, Lin and Cloud Gate’s dancers continue to amaze audiences with the theoretical power of the moving body. This research grew out of my long-time interest in Cloud Gate Dance
Theatre, one of the most productive dance companies in Taiwan, and its changing repertoire over its first three decades. I have selected a few examples out of more than seventy dance pieces by Lin Hwai-min, its founder and artistic director. I read his choreographies as critiques upon the social and political phenomena of the corresponding eras. My approach follows the model of allowing dance and various theories
from cultural studies, post-colonial studies and globalization discourses to converse. I seek to trace the connections between Cloud Gate’s artistic initiatives and the changing identity of Taiwan. In my analysis of the dances, I incorporate issues of race and ethnicity in the inquiry of ‘Chineseness’ in the first place, while, in subsequent sections, issues of the mainstream vs the
vernacular culture, and class differences that arise from Taipei’s urbanization process in the 1980s, are discussed. In looking at more recent works, I focus on global and transnational studies as they elucidate Taiwan’s status in relation to mainland China and the world.
