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攝影│林政億
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攝影│林政億
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攝影│林政億
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攝影│林政億
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攝影│林政億
It Takes Two to Tango─2017 New Choreographer Project
TU Lee-Yuan
Venue：Huashan 1914 Creative Park Umay Theater
Comments on the finalist artworks
Placed on the arms of two dancers is a porcelain tea cup. Consequently, the dancers must be extremely careful with their movement. The choreographer conditions the dancers’ bodies with a real object, and extracts a dance vocabulary from the movement informed by new objectivity. The vocabulary speaks about the oppression and disintegration of one’s subjectivity in a relationship. The syntax and logic of the body language subtly oscillates between reality and a metaphorical level, allowing the dancers’ real emotions to sieve through the form and techniques. The use of lighting, music and stage renders the dance succinct and powerful, without any emotional rhetoric and narrative addition so that human existence and interpersonal relationships can be candidly delineated. “Afternoon tea” embodies the Western culture and etiquette. The choreographer has meticulously overseen the cultural meaning, creating a possibility for the audience to read the clashing of Eastern and Western cultures delineated by the Asian and Western dancers. This is a compelling piece that draws the audience in to look into the relationship between two people. (Commentator: LIN Yu-Pin)
About the Artwork
“It takes two to tango” is an English idiom that is often equated with the Chinese saying that “a single slap in the face doesn’t make a sound,” meaning that both parties are responsible in any quarrel, as both are to blame in a conflict.
Articles in the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights inspired TU Lee-Yuan in the process of creating this work, where he attempts to interpret these articles with his body, narrowing the focus of the greatest concern for human rights to the relationship between two people. These two people can represent any person, nation, society, or race, each with their respective experiences of historical moments, or life memories as they engage in an encounter, a separation, a competition, escape, or possibly a final compromise.
A personal experience with the refugee crisis in Europe gave TU Lee-Yuan a deep empathy for existence and the interactive relationship between human beings. The dance work reveals the cool detachment of Nordic-style. Using minimalistic shifts between blue and white florescent lighting, he creates a sense of the emptiness in human relationships under technological advances that seem to create intimacy but are in actuality alienating.
For TU Lee-Yuan, this work is a milestone before the artist turns 30; it is a gentle blow – not heavy-handed, but weighty -- delivered to the self and to the present society.
About the Artist
TU Lee-Yuan
Currently a dancer with the Göteborgs Operans Danskompani in Sweden, TU Lee-Yuan graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2011, and joined the Meimage Dance Company, performing in the work Beyond the Pale. Since joining the Göteborgs Operans Danskompani in 2013, he has worked with international choreographers including Marcos Morau, Sharon Eyal, OhadNaharin, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Saburo Teshigawara, Anton Lachky, Alan Lucien Øyen, and Marina Mascarell. He has participated in numerous innovative and stylistically diverse projects, and was voted Best Male Dancer by the audience in 2015. In 2016, he held his first interactive photographic exhibition, Humans and Flowers.
Producer │ LAN Tzu-Ming
Artistic Director │ HO Shiao-Mei
Choreographer │ TU Lee-Yuan
Dancers │ TU Lee-Yuan、Jan Spotak
Music │ Jan Spotak
Lighting │ LIU Chia-Ming
