Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

The performance Yo Gee Ti was the first to make knitting the central concept of its dances. It knits street dancing and modern dance together into a weave, making the dancers the sewing needle. When street dancers and dancers from academies perform together, hip-hop attitudes and solemn manners continually interact with each other, resembling loosely and tightly knit threads pulling at each other, forming a three-dimensional but intangible weave in the shape of a dance. This performance is organized by the National Theatre and Concert Hall, which invited a French choreographer to be the artistic director/choreographer for this production. Yo Gee Ti uses an old literary weave as the foundation and complements it with diverse styles of music and silky light rays, putting street dancing onto a Proscenium Arch. This production features Taiwanese and French dancers, creating an extreme tension that transcends the boundaries between nations and different types of dances.   Committee member:TAI Juan-Ann

How can you dance street dance while wearing 10 kilograms of a heavy sweater? Yo Gee Ti, the performance that has been collaborated between Taiwanese and French artists for two years, gathers performers from various areas. It introduces weaving and street dance into the National Theater, inspiring a new idea to the dance community and to the vast street dancing people of Taiwan.

Artwork Introduction

A collaboration between Taiwanese and French dancers, a dialogue between knitwear and dance, and a shattering of the boundaries between street dance and modern dance—Yo Gee Ti is all about crossover. Hip-hop dance entered the French theatre scene about twenty years ago, thanks to key artists such as Mourad Merzouki, whose background is rooted in circus, boxing, and hip-hop. In Yo Gee Ti, Merzouki surpasses the borders of hip-hop, selecting five French hip-hop dancers with additional dance training and five emerging Taiwanese contemporary dancers. Together they underwent a long and difficult process of workshops and rehearsals to produce an innovative dance vocabulary that cannot be simply defined as hip-hop or modern.

The dialogue between bodies and objects is always an important inspiration for Merzouki’s creations. Yo Gee Ti is a poetic encounter between knitting and choreography. Merzouki used sculptural wool knitwear by renowned Taiwanese designer Johan KU as both the costume and the inspiration. Merzouki wove into the performance the motif of knitting in all its variations. Explaining the use of heavy knitwear, he said, “The costume as a constraint for the dancer’s gesture pushes me to find the rhythm elsewhere.” Yo Gee Ti not only presents a new language for the body, but also opens new horizons for theatrical audiences.

Conversation between Knit and Dance

Yo Gee Ti is all about crossover. It is the collaboration of National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center; Mourad Merzouki, the French choreographer of Company Käfig; and Johan KU, the Taiwanese fashion designer. This performance not only challenges the relationship between knitwear and dance, but breaks the boundaries between street and contemporary dance.

In France, street dance has been stepping from the streets into theaters for twenty years. Choreographer Mourad Merzouki, who has a background of street dance and martial arts training, is one of the drivers of this trend, and the dance group that he established, Company Käfig, has attained a significant status in France as well. Merzouki’s work often investigates the relation between human bodies and stage elements.

Merzouki considers “knitwear” and “dance” to share the same spirit, and KU’s clothes have also developed unusually, just like “organic knitting.” Therefore, in Yo Gee Ti, Merzouki brings together the souls of dancing and weaving by asking dancers to do KU’s sculpture-like weaves and perform by twisting their bodies. The dancers’ movements look like the motion of spindles of a spinning machine, continually interpreting the theme “weave” on stage and in the dance.

KU said the Yo Gee Ti costumes are mainly designed as sweaters and scarves, breaking the stereotypes of street dance, which favors caps and oversized clothes. “At first, I preferred to use synthetic fibers to design drip-dry and easy-to-clean costumes, but Merzouki insisted on using wool!” said KU. Wool can weigh up to 10 kilograms, so KU suggested Merzouki not let dancers wear such a heavy costume to dance. But Merzouki found the weave inspiring, and the costumes, as a constraint on the dancers’ motion, push them to find a new rhythm, and their mechanical movements can present the impression of a spinning machine.

East and West Co-Production: New Words for Dance

After understanding Merzouki’s intentions, KU then designed a variety of new costumes for different kinds of moves. The dance develops from high action to slow and poetic movements, and this development is represented in the costumes as well: from tightness that reveals the dancers’ forms to complex knitwear. Besides Merzouki’s long-term collaborators like stage designer Benjamin Lebreton and lighting designer Yoann Tivoli, he also invited an expert in feathers, Elisabeth Berthon, to join the team. The whole stage is done in the colors of black, white, and gray, and covered in tassels and huge knitting in keeping with the “weaving” theme.

In addition, Merzouki himself selected five new French street dancers whose background and training are similar to his, and five professionally-trained Taiwanese contemporary dancers. He made them rehearse and practice for long hours to match their body language across different backgrounds, hoping to bridge the gap between street and contemporary dance.

In search of a style that combines both East and West, Merzouki invited his long-term collaborator AS’N to design the music. AS’N together with Taiwanese percussionist YANG Yi-Ping, who lives in France, and Fabrice Bihan and Dorian Lamotte of French Quatuor Debussy, composed and recorded many enchanting songs. These songs, based on strings and percussion, are nearly fifty minutes in length, and their varied tunes convey rich emotions.

About the Artist

National Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center (National Theater and National Concert Hall) takes the enhancement of national artistic standards as its priority. It has introduced countless world-renowned artists such as the New York Philharmonic, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and the world’s leading tenors. The National Theater and Concert Hall also serves as a stage for leading Taiwanese performance groups, who first established themselves in Taiwan, then embark on the international stage to display the beauty of Taiwan’s performing arts to the rest of the world.

Production Team

Artistic Direction & Choreography: Mourad Merzouki

Dance: Kader Belmoktar, CHEN Hong-Ling, Bruce Chiefare, Sabri Colin, Erwan Godard, HSIEH Yi-Chun, KAN Han-Hsin, KAO Hsin-Yu, Nicolas Sannier, WU Chien-Wei

Music Design: AS’N

Lighting Design: Yoann Tivoli, assisted by Nicolas Faucheux

Stage Design: Benjamin Lebreton in collaboration with Mourad Merzouki

Felt Craft：Elisabeth Berthon for Morse Felt Studio,

Chloé Lecoup for Morse Felt Studio,

Johan Ku Design Ltd.

Costume Design：Johan KU

Commissioned by：National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center, R.O.C.

Executive Production：Centre Chorégraphique National de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne∕Compagnie Käfig

Coproduction：Festival Montpellier Danse 2012, Maison des Arts de Créteil, Fondation BNP Paribas