The most famous choreographer of Asia has brought to Moscow his
ballet Cursive which was initially staged as a spectacle show depicting
the philosophy and beauty of the ancient Chinese calligraphy.
The
Taiwanese Cloud Gate Dance Theatre is participating in the Chekhov
Festival for the third time already and always fascinates the public
with an unbroken series of innovative dances. The theatre was named
after a five-thousand-old ritual dance of China.
Choreographer Lin Hwai-min, the prize-winner of a plethora of
international awards, has exhibited tireless curiosity about the art of
calligraphy, promoted it among his dancers, demonstrated the blown-up
hieroglyphs in the dance classroom and stimulated the artists to
improvise viewing the master-pieces of the old masters. The Cursive
ballet is plastic expression of the ancient writings, an attempt to
reproduce a smooth movement of a brush and transformation of an ink
drop in water in movements of a human body. Therefore, Lin Hwai-min
acts as a plastic calligrapher using the live artists as living brushes
and the stage as a rice paper.
Instead of decorations they use dim white light projections as if
appearing from under the pen of a master in the stage wings and in the
background. The ballet doesn’t feature the variety of scenes but
corporal cryptogram of dancers, diversity of movements and
choreographic “pas” continuously remind of the “army” of 150, 000
Chinese hieroglyphs.
Lin Hwai-min came to feel the powerful energy hidden in the
masterpieces of illustrious Chinese artists and used it in
choreography. The energy is ascending inside a human body in a
spiral-like manner making it possible for one to keep on cognizing
one’s abilities. The path of cognizing is really endless.
photo by: David Hartung for TIME
Lin Hwai-min is a founder and art-director of the Cloud Gate Dance
Theatre in Taiwan. A world-famous calligrapher created numerous dances
that evoked the unique experience of Taiwan people within the larger
Chinese and Asian context. In 2003 he was proclaimed the Outstanding
Citizen of Taipei. The Dance Europe magazine referred to Lin as the
“Choreographer of the 20th century” and the Ballet Internationale,
magazine called him the Person of the Year alongside with Merce
Cunningham, Jiri Kylian, Pina Bausch and William Forsythe. Since 2000
Lin has been the art-director of the Novel Hall New Dance Series which
represents famous avant-garde groups of the extraordinary world
dancers.
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