- Date 2014.10.17
- Venue Wellspring Theater
Long River
WCdance
Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award Winner
The river that gives life to Mother Earth is the source of creative inspiration. Seven dancers move and extend their limbs on a minimalist stage, and return to the essential relationship between dance and body. The meticulous and rigorous choreography reveals a structure integrity that is both elegant and emotive, and presents a new vision in the evolution of Taiwan’s modern dance lexicon.
On the whole, the work’s simplicity and authenticity returns to the original intention of modern dance, while also questioning the raison d'etre of that intention. Delicate and minimalist gestures successfully convey a rich feast of visual aesthetics. In addition, the modernist avant-garde and three dimensional music by improvisational musician and composer LEE, Shi-yang is apropos to the controlled, captivating, and rich dance work.
Comments on the Finalist
If dance can be said to be an art form that combines space, time and body, then Long River is a definitively higher form of dance. The deployment of the dancer’s bodies, the execution of force, as well as the spatial and temporal lines and structures described by the dancer’s bodies, combine to fully showcase LIN Wen-Chung’s outstanding talent and expression of emotions as a choreographer. The superior physical capabilities of the dancers are fully exploited; the tenacity, expanse and stamina of their bodies maximize the sensory magnitude of dance. Structure and mood in mutual contrast, this work has been touted as the most breathtaking dance work of 2014. (Commentator / CHAO Chi-Fang)
About the Artist
Born in 1973, LIN Wen-chung received his MFA with an emphasis in choreography in modern dance from the University of Utah and a BFA in dance performance from the Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. After spending ten years in the USA, including his seven-year career as a full-time dancer in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, LIN Wen-chung returned to Taiwan and started his own dance company WCdance with an expectation to make it “a small and delicate dance company which focuses on the purest and the most basic physical movement to continuously explore movements unique to a contemporary epoch as well as to establish new physical aesthetics with sensitivity and humanity.” “Dance our own dance” is WCdance’s belief in the purest physical form of dance and its desire to represent Taiwan on the international stage with WCdance’s irreplaceable uniqueness. In 2013, his Small End won a nomination for the top fifteen productions in the 12th Taishin Arts Award.
