- Date 2018.05.09
- Venue National Taichung Theater
LUNA
Bulareyaung Dance and Cultural Foundation
Jury’s Comment for the Grand Prize Winner
LUNA is a milestone production! In an era of accelerating change and information explosion, this piece expresses inner calmness and assurance embodied in impactful physical movements. Bulareyaung Pagarlava’s work fully manifests a powerful cultural energy with physical strength and beauty. This piece demonstrates mutual respect between different communities as well as the possibilities of negotiation. After the refinement of learning from the culture of a different tribe, the choreographer applies a contemporary vocabulary and masculine posture through the company dancers to create a unique bodily expression. Bulareyaung Pagarlava’s dance is grounded in the perspective of human existence and enriches the culture of Taiwan.
Comments on the Finalist
Refined and forged by time, the dancers’ performance, uniting nature, life and culture as one, conveys a sense of inner calmness and assurance. Their tanned, robust bodies, executing simplified and pure movements, present a pious and unforced theatrical tableau. Each dancer’s concentrating look is matched with slow and steady singing of traditional indigenous melody; the sound and the body are connected through the music, harmonized in the Bunun eight-part polyphony (pasibutbut), filled with vitality and embracing with emotions. The combination of movement, still moments, the jumping and running demonstrate the power and beauty of dancing, revealing its fundamental and lasting essence while stirring the deepest corner of one’s soul. This work represents a self-seeking journey, and to go farther is for the sake of going home and rediscovering oneself.
(Commentator: YU Shan-Lu)
Jury’s Comments for the Grand Prize Winner
LUNA is a milestone production!
In an era of accelerating change and information explosion, this piece expresses inner calmness and assurance embodied in impactful physical movements. Bulareyaung Pagarlava’s work fully manifests a powerful cultural energy with physical strength and beauty. This piece demonstrates mutual respect between different communities as well as the possibilities of negotiation. After the refinement of learning from the culture of a different tribe, the choreographer applies a contemporary vocabulary and masculine posture through the company dancers to create a unique bodily expression. Bulareyaung Pagarlava’s dance is grounded in the perspective of human existence and enriches the culture of Taiwan.
Artwork Introduction
LUNA is the dance company’s first dance piece based on its field survey.
The choreographer led his dancers to conduct a field survey in Nantou’s Luluna Village, living the natural way of life. Collaborating with Luluna Bunun Choir to learn the Bunun tribal songs that have been considered a world cultural heritage, they practiced indigenous dance and music as well as the teachings and anticipations inherent in the culture.
To create this dance, the dancers learned from the choir and tribal elders the singing and “Malastapan,” a traditional hunting ritual, to incorporate the Bunun culture into contemporary dance. By responding to the traditional and the contemporary from the indigenous perspective of a matured man, the dancers have taken an introspective journey within.
The survival of the dance company is as essential as breathing in the creation of a dance. Even silence can express the greatest power among the faint afterimages from headlamps. Through LUNA, the audiences, who have been largely isolated from nature, were guided to enter and breathe together in the mountains, presenting a different “dialogue” or “dialectic” between the traditional and the modern. It was also reminiscent of the dance company’s steadfast journey in exploring its cultural heritage and identity since its establishment four years ago, which has culminated in the creation of LUNA.
About the Artist
Bulareyaung Dance and Cultural Foundation
Paiwan choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava was a dancer in Cloud Gate Dance Troupe and a choreographer at Cloud Gate 2, and had been invited to choreograph and create works for Martha Graham Dance Company in the US. In 2014, he returned to his hometown and founded his own dance company at the old sugar refinery in Taitung. Working with a dozen of young dancers from eastern Taiwan, Bulareyaung and the dancers immerse themselves in the natural environment enriched by the mountains and the ocean and explore the relationship between sound and physical movement as a means to uncover the unique indigenous culture and humanistic history of Taiwan’s east coast, creating the body expression and language of indigenous contemporary dance.
Production Team
Artistic Director & Choreography:BULAREYAUNG PAGARLAVA
Production Manager & Lighting Design:LI,JIAN-CHANG
Costume Supervisor:HSU,YI-CHUN
Assistant Rehearsal Master:SYU,PEI-GEN
Executive director:SICIMI‧SIMUY
Associate producer:LUO,RONG-SHENG
Administration Staff:KUO,YI-JUNG
Dancers:
JHOU,YU-RUEI, ZENG, JHIH-HAO, JHOU, YU-RUEI
HSU, TING-WEI, KUNG,BO-YUAN, WANG CHIEH,
CHU YU-HANG, KONG YA-MING, KAO MIN-CIEN
Troupe Leader:ISPALAKAN UMAS
Music Director:WANG,KUEI-MING
Administration Staff:
KAO,HUI-CHING、UMAV TAKILUDUNG、SSU,JO-CHUAN
Performer:
WANG KUEI-MING, MA HSIA-YU, WANG EN-TZU,
WANG,HUNG-EN、UMAV TAKILUDUNG、WANG,SEN-LIN
SHIH JEN-HSIN, WU CHENG-KUANG, SSU TIEN-YU,
WU FU-MING, YU YA-CHIN, WU AI-WEI, CHUAN LING-YU,
WANG LEI, SUNG A-CHIU, WANG TZU-CHUAN, CHIN,MEI-YING,
SHIH LUAN-FENG, SUNG SHU-CHEN, SHIH YU-HSIANG,
KU LING-E, TIEN CHU-HUA, ISPALAKAN UMAS,
TAISNUNAN MUA, ISPALAKAN BUKUN, MU U ISKAUTAN