Great expectations

原刊台灣：《 英文台北時報》2009年12月4日 13

It has been three years since Legend Lin Dance Theatre (無垢舞蹈劇場) was last seen at the National Theater, performing an extract from Hymne aux Fleurs Qui Passent (花神祭春芽). It’s been four years since the company’s last full-length performance at the theater, in the 2006 revival of Mirrors de Vie (醮). And it has been eight long years since troupe founder and artistic director Lin Li-chen (林麗珍) has presented a new work.

So it is easy to understand the anticipation generated by the National CKS Cultural Center’s (Taiwan Performing Arts Center) announcement that Lin was creating a new work as part of its flagship production series, following up on last year’s Mackay — The Black Bearded Bible Man (黑鬚馬偕) and Robert Wilson’s Orlando this year.

Tickets for Lin’s new production, Song of Pensive Beholding (Chants de la Destinee, 觀), which will be staged from Dec. 18 to Dec. 20, have been going fast. The Saturday night performance sold out immediately, leading the company and the National Theater to add a fourth show, a matinee on Saturday. Sunday’s matinee is now sold out, as are the top seats for the Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

Why all the fuss? Quite simply because Lin’s works are like nothing else you will see in Taiwan — or anywhere else. Taiwan has a number of good dance and theater companies, several with strong international reputations, such as Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集), U-Theatre (優人神鼓) and Stan Lai’s (賴聲川) Performance Workshop (表演工作坊), that have developed almost cult-like followings. But Lin’s productions are in a class of their own. More than just dance, they engage all your senses and transport you into a very earthy, very primitive world.

Lin, a Keelung native, grew up going to Taoist temple ceremonies and Taiwanese festivals, and there are strong religious and mystical elements to her work. She says the theater is like a palace for paying tribute to the god of nature.

She is quiet, saying more through gestures and her eyes than words. Her choreography is similarly minimalist; it can take minutes for a dancer to move from point A to point B — or shift their center of gravity. But then there will be an explosive burst of energy, an explosion that is as much a relief to the audience it is for the dancers.

She says she prefers to say little about her work because she wants audiences to draw their own conclusions. Asked to sum up Song of Pensive Beholding, Lin said the theme was “to see the cruelty that comes from human beings’ desire, that through civilization and economic development we have lost the most precious part of us. We dare not think of it, we can’t go back, we have to keep going forward, waiting for something to happen.”

Once again, Lin explores the relationship between heaven, earth and mankind that she began with Mirrors de Vie. Song of Pensive Beholding is the final work in the trilogy. In it, she tells a story about a group of eagles, using the birds as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of humans and nature.

Lin has worked with the same people, her “tribe,” almost from the beginning. In addition to her dancers and musicians, the beautiful costumes, with a strong Miao hill-tribe influence, were designed by Academy Award-winner Tim Yip (葉錦添), while the lighting was done by Cheng Kuo-yang (鄭國揚) and the sets and props by Chang Wang (張忘).

The five elements of life — fire, earth, water, air and metal — are represented in the costumes and the set, which will be, as usual, pretty sparse.

Wang said working with Lin is always a challenge but he is willing to drop whatever else he is doing when she calls. Once you have seen one of Lin’s works, it’s easy to understand why.