Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award Winner 

HO Hsiao-Mei has developed her unique body vocabulary over her long dialectics on “humans” and “puppets” over time. Through changes of trench coats and the human body, she creates the rapidly transitioning context, and the constantly changing relationships within. The slanted surface changes the relationship between the dancers and the floor, as well as the emotional gravity and balance. Dancers run as if flying at times, and cling on as if afraid of falling off. The strange combination of a female body and male legs put together a strange and twisted “self-portrait”. Ho’s strength lies in her use of surrealist images to create surprising stage effects; the most complicated entanglement of intimate relationship is hidden under the romantic ties on surface. Ho is not trying to depict the superficial emotions in today’s Taiwan; rather, she wants to represent the emotional experience deep inside Taiwanese people’s sub-consciousness. A twisted horizon is used as the main stage in this interdisciplinary cooperation with paper-cutting artist Jam Wu. The dance performance uses costumes, light and shades, and paper-cutting art to bring strong visual tensions to the three-dimensional space of the stage, creating brand new dancing bodies.

Comments on the Finalist

The unique angle of the stage poses as a brand new challenge for dancers who are used to control own body; a new dancing body has thus been created. The strange combination of female body and male legs in the latter half of the performance—an ambiguous and weird gender—has further enhanced the emotions, which is a state where number of anxious tensions coexist, presented in the first half. (Commentator/ WANG Hao-Wei) 

Artwork Introduction

My Dear starts with the emotional topic of interpersonal relationships, setting aside the dazzling techniques of the West and the burden of movement of traditional culture. The paper-cut imagery hints at the incompleteness of the self, while puppet-like dancers interweave between yin and yang silhouettes. Scene after scene depicting various conditions of life are deduced to precipitate a style of Eastern impressionism. The windbreakers on the dancers replace the concealed curtains of a stage, and serve as a springboard for dancers from which to switch roles. Furthermore, they symbolize an overpowering invisible force, much like the scene being played out on the stage. The last scene of the performance exhibits a collage-styled humanoid that hints at the coexistence between people and the need to erase part of the self to make room for the acceptance of another. This work is also the product of collaboration with Jam Wu, the first Taiwanese artist-in-residence of Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton.

Ho's strength lies in her use of surreal images to create surprising stage effects: The most complicated entanglement of intimate relationships is hidden beneath the romantic ties on the surface. Ho makes no attempt to depict the superficial emotions of today's Taiwan; rather, she aims to represent the emotional experience deep inside Taiwanese people's sub-consciousness.

About the Artist

Hailed as the "master of creating surreal imaginations," mid-career choreographer HO Hsiao-Mei founded MeimageDance in 2010. The troupe was founded in the spirit of highlighting a distinct style that reflects both dance and visual culture. Beginning in 2011, the group launched the Button*New Choreographer project, which mainly invites dancers living abroad to return to their home country to produce and perform, as well as share their experiences abroad.