Cloud Gate Dance Theatre will present its new work "Send in a Cloud" in Taichung and Kaohsiung from April 30 to May 8, after recently premiering two versions of the piece which explores human emotions at Taipei's National Theater.
While sharing the same music -- 12 from the more than 30 recorded pieces in Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Solo Cello Suites arranged and performed by Japanese musician Yasuaki Shimizu with saxophonettes -- and images projected as background on the stage, one version is performed by 12 dancers, the other by 13, the dance troupe told CNA Wednesday.
Cheng Tsung-lung (???), Cloud Gate's artistic director since 2020, said during a post-show talk in Taipei on April 17 that he first began thinking about creating a piece using the Japanese musician's recordings of Bach's music, which he was introduced to by film director Tsai Ming-liang (???), in 2019.
He continued developing the piece with dancers working from home at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and divided them into two groups as he has done in recent works for the tour, he said.
However, after tapping into the dancers' personal life experiences when creating the piece, which seeks to explore and reflect the various emotions people experience, he ended up with two different versions, as the two teams of dancers were given latitude to perform using their own styles, Cheng said.
In developing the piece, Cloud Gate also held workshops for dancers to draw lines, shapes and whatever images reflected their state of mind. Those drawings have been used to created the animated backdrop seen on the stage, said projection designer Chou Tung-yen (???) and animation designer Wei Ho-ting (???) during the post-show talk.
Meanwhile, Grammy Award-winning artist Marcelo Anez created sounds, some using recordings made by dancers in their daily life, as transitions between the 12 Bach pieces, and for a few segments, some of which are performed differently by the two teams of dancers in their respective versions.
In addition, he arranged for Shimizu's music to be played through specially placed speakers at the venue to create a unique sound experience for Cloud Gate's new piece.
"It appears to be the same show," Anez said in an Instagram video posted by Cloud Gate before the tour began. "It's like watching the same movie twice, and quickly realizing it's not the same movie."
"Send in a Cloud" will be staged at National Taichung Theater with the 12-dancer version on April 30 and May 1, then the 13-dancer version on May 7-8 at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts. Tickets are available through the OpenTix ticketing service.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel