Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalists

In The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist, choreographer LIN Ting-Syu smoothly integrates the religious world constituted of Taoist priests, the present world and deities through a clear dance structure, spatial arrangement, and a careful, reserved use of folk symbolism, producing a work performed in on cohesive stretch with well-managed tension. What makes this work valuable is that it sidesteps the rut of a “Taiwanese style” performance, while refraining from overemphasizing on the symbiotic connection between the dance body and the local religious belief. Instead, with solid dance movements and techniques, it lays out the spiritual levels of humans, ghosts, and gods in Taoist rituals in a neat manner, while presenting a rich visual and auditory experience sparked by the collision between the powerful beiguan music designed by YAN Sheng-Wen and the dancers’ performance. Overall, this is a work of maturity and refinement. (Commentator / WU Meng-Hsuan)

Artwork Introduction

Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi was founded in 2019.

The previous productions of Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi focus on Taiwanese folk culture, and uncover local and grassroots materials through field research, which are then adapted into topics and a direction of their productions. In recent years, their development of perspectives on the body revolves around the body-nature relationship and the mental state of individuals. Through studying different social issues, they embody the possibility of a contemporary body intervening its own spirituality, while reflecting on the meaning of a body’s existence through dance productions.

From 2019 to 2023, Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi has been shortlisted twice and nominated three times for the Taishin Arts Award. The shortlisted works include The Golden Crow That Does Not Exist (2023) and Deluge (2020); and the nominated works are Voyage through Mountains and Seas (2022), The Golden Crow That Does Not Exist (2022) and Deluge (2019).

In 2019, Deluge was selected into the final round of the Yokohama Dance Collection, and their production – The Invincible Swiftness of Golden Crow, was awarded “Best Performer Award” at the 24 MASDANZA, the International Contemporary Dance Festival in Spain. In the same year, LIN Ting-Syu, the artistic director of Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, was awarded “Highly Qualified Dance Artist” by the Seoul International Choreography Festival.

They have been invited to publish their productions at numerous art institutions and festivals, including the 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), the 14th Young Stars New Vision of the National Culture and Arts Foundation that was toured to three venues of the National Performing Arts Center, the Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival, the National Taichung Theater’s 2021 Artist Cultivation Project, Cloud Gate’s “Art Makers Project,” the Stray Birds Dance Platform, the 2020 Tainan Arts Festival, the CoDance Festival, and the 2019 Sun-Shier Dance Theatre. Internationally, they have also published several productions at multiple foreign arts festivals and platforms in multiple countries like Spain, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and Macau.

 About the Artist 

The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist is intricately woven with the culture and rituals of the Taoist Zengyi School in Taiwan, which is a contemporary dance co-production by the group, sound artist YAN Sheng-Wen, and LI Chung-Tang, the first-ever Taoist Zengyi School master that passed the register ritual by climbing the sword ladder in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District in the past 70 years, with Li’s mystic Taoist pulpit setting and live Beiguan performance.

In 2018, the creator of the production, LIN Ting-Syu, embarked on a journey of seeking the root of his religious belief, and traveled to Yingtan City in China’s Jiangxi Province, where he visited the Tianshi Mansion that is the home shrine of ZHANG Daoling in the historic town of Shangqing. Lin incorporates his journey into the context of this production, drawing inspiration from all that is unrecorded, which is in turn externalized by the creative essence of The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist.

This work leads the audience through a tunnel of folk beliefs, enabling them to experience the world of the spirits at the other side of the tunnel in a theatrical setting. Through interpretation and re-creation of the contemporary body combined with Taiwanese folk and traditional rituals, it stimulates and guides the audience’s senses, engaging them in boundless imagination of this work through the integration of faith, music/sound, space, and the interlacing of the real and the virtual. The production in the theatre is immersed in a spatial and ritualistic atmosphere as if it were staged in the countryside, whereas the performers are also pushed to their physical limits, using their bodies to interpret and create the highly different viewpoints on the ritualistic body. The core concept of this production/performance is to re-examine the interrelations and contrapositions among the various roles through integrating performing arts with local religious beliefs.

Production Team

Artistic Director and Choreographer｜LIN Ting-Syu

Physical and Dance Director｜CHEN Hsin-Yu

Executive Producer｜LEE Ming-En

Performers｜WEN Yun-Chu, HSIEH Chih-Ying, LI Zong-Lin, YAN Sheng-Wen, LI Chung-Tang

Live Beiguan Musicians｜LU Kun-Hong, HSU Wu-Chang, CHUANG Wei-Chien, LIN Cheng-Hsin

Music Designer｜YAN Sheng-Wen

Lighting Designer ｜CHIU Pin-Hsueh

Stage Manager and Technical Supervisor｜CHEN Chao-Chun

Graphic Designer｜HSU Ming-Wen

Still Photographer｜Basir Yang

On-set Videographer｜CHEN Kuan-Yu

Cooperation｜Kaohsiung Neimen Xuanmiao Taoist Altar, LI Yi-Fang, CHI Nai-Yun