Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

With simple daily movements and repeated actions such as scratching, smirking, bending, shaking, rolling, and running, the performance truly reflects the humbleness and the difficulties of human life.  The incomplete nature of life and the struggle of survival are vividly expressed.  The work allows us to see through our loneliness, anxiety, and helplessness, to face the heart constricted by the civilization and morality, and to re-embrace our own limitation and the hope of life.  The dancers are well-trained.  The structure is simple but contagious, yielding an explosively tension. (Committee member/De-hai CHEN)

About the Artist

Choreographer Lin Hwai-min founded Cloud Gate (whose name refers to the oldest known dance in China some 5,000 years ago) in 1973.  Many years later in 1999, Lin formed Cloud Gate 2 as a way to foster young choreographers and develop programs to reach communities via performances, workshops, lectures and residencies.

Renowned dancer and choreographer Lo Man-fei was invited to serve as Founding Artistic Director for Cloud Gate 2. After Lo’s tragic death in 2006, Lin resumed artistic direction. Cloud Gate 2 maintains an active schedule of lecture-demonstrations abroad and presentations of new dances annually.