• Date 2018.06.29
  • Venue Polymer Art Space, Taipei, Taiwan

Break & Break! Dance Video Exhibition

CHOU Shu-Yi

Jury’s Comment for the Performing Arts Award Winner

An intimate and personal work, CHOU Shu-yi’s Break & Break! Dance Video Exhibition is also ambitious in scope, exploring the impact of rapid development in cities and industrial areas in Asia. Chou successfully imbues his performance with both a deep sense of self-reflection and considerable relevance to the localities he explores, and indeed beyond them. The work also conveys the artist’s personal journey as he interprets his body’s response to different urban environments, uncovering new directions in his own practice. These sites and the artist’s responses to them are depicted in a multi-channel projection that provides a dynamic backdrop and a point of dialogue for a compelling dance performance. While the work premiered at a specific site, its relevance to the global experience of urbanisation suggests that it can be staged elsewhere with the use of non-traditional sites that emphasise the centrality of the built environment to the artist’s project.

 


Comments on the Finalist

Having received praises and accolades from the mainstream circle, Chou Shu-Yi took a turn and embarked on a solitary journey of introspective exploration as he travelled through Taiwan and peripheral regions of various countries. Caring not what the market desired and with great honesty, he responded to the impacts that our time and environment have created on him and modern people. In real sites outside the black box, he reflected on what dancing meant to him with the purest body. After several years of inner debate and exploration, he finally chose the rooftop of Polymer—an art community and performance space in Taipei converted from a disused textile factory—to conclude this stage of his life. A seeker who has employed dancing as his instrument immersed the audience in a performance constituted with dance and video projection in an urban cove. When his silhouette suddenly popped out, dancing with his own avatars in the video amidst the urban lights and ruins, one could not help but feeling submerged in this heartbreaking, mesmerizing experience.

(Commentator: LIN Jing-Jie)


Jury’s Comments for the Performing Arts Award Winner

An intimate and personal work, CHOU Shu-yi’s Break & Break! Dance Video Exhibition is also ambitious in scope, exploring the impact of rapid development in cities and industrial areas in Asia. Chou successfully imbues his performance with both a deep sense of self-reflection and considerable relevance to the localities he explores, and indeed beyond them. The work also conveys the artist’s personal journey as he interprets his body’s response to different urban environments, uncovering new directions in his own practice. These sites and the artist’s responses to them are depicted in a multi-channel projection that provides a dynamic backdrop and a point of dialogue for a compelling dance performance. While the work premiered at a specific site, its relevance to the global experience of urbanisation suggests that it can be staged elsewhere with the use of non-traditional sites that emphasise the centrality of the built environment to the artist’s project.


Artwork Introduction

Break & Break! is Chou Su-Yi’s first dance video exhibition. The word “break” can mean both “pause” and “damage,” linking two different meanings in a subtle way. The title of this work refers to the state of decay when the human body falls into uselessness and the dilapidated state of land after battles with corporate powers. During 2014 and 2017, the artist travelled among new and old cities in Asia, including both China and Taiwan. From urban centers to peripheral regions, he used his body to interact with both useful and useless landscapes and filmed over one hundred videos, which he later edited into his works to recreate his dialogues with these places. The premiere of Break & Break! took place at Polymer Art Space in Taipei. Creating a dialogue through the collision between physical movements and the previously disused space, the artist performed his dance along with the dynamic video image, leading the audience into the space of the video to perceive the power of the body and dance, their presence in life and their intricate dialogue.


About the Artist

Using the body to communicate with the world, Chou Shu-Yi’s dance is his way of examining his own life as well as all the visible and invisible social phenomena. By linking the body to the environment, he consistently explores new media and collaborations with different disciplines while presenting works in theatrical space and daily environment. He has received much international recognition for his choreographic works and collaborated with both Taiwanese and foreign dance companies. His works have been featured in numerous important festivals and venues, including Fall for Dance Festival in New York; Internationale Tanzmesse NRW, Dusseldorf, Germany; Sadler’s Wells Theater in the UK; Festival OFF d’Avignon and Le Collectif Essonne Danse in France; Hong Kong Arts Festival; Beijin Dance Festival; and the National Theater and National Concert Hall in Taiwan. In 2004, he co-founded the dance company, Horse, with Chen Wu-Kang and Su Jia-Wei; and in 2011, he founded Su-Yi & Dancers to more elaborately connect arts and society. In recent years, he has been focusing on exploring the body language that is particularly Asian.



Production Team

Film Director & Choreographer:Shu-Yi Chou

Video Design:Max Lee

Sound Design:Yu-Jun Wang

Lighting Design:Chih-Heng Chuang

Graphic design:Winder Chen

Video Recording:William Lu

Exhibition Cooperation:Polymer