Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

About 2005- 4th Annual Taishin Arts Awards

Taishin Arts Awards are now well established among the arts fields in Taiwan, we are excited to see the increase in the numbers of submissions. This year we congratulate the following artists, we welcome more of you to submit your creations as one day you might be the one to stand on stage and deliever your own "thank you" speech.

The Visual Arts Award：Huang-Chen TANG [ I Go Traveling V: A Postcard with Scenery]

The Performing Award：Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan [ Wild Cursive ]

The Jury's Special Award：The National Guoguang Opera Company [ Three Persons and Two Lamps ]

Citation from the jurys for the visual and performance arts winners:

 Wild Cursive

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

Wild Cursive by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan introduces calligraphy into the art of dance, interpreting an ancient aesthetic tradition through contemporary practice.  The awe-inspiring dance makes excellent use of Taichi, martial arts and music to create a riveting aesthetic that is whole and innovative.

Wild Cursive obliterates the physical duality of slowness and quickness, motion and stillness, height and lowliness, and transcends the dialectics of masculinity and femininity, imagination and reality, the inner and the outer, the East and the West.  It arrives at a realm where strict discipline embodies complete freedom.  The final work in the Cursive trilogy reaches a new peak in modern dance and showcases the choreographer’s, continued quest for a new dance idiom.  Without a doubt, his unparallelled achievement serves as an important benchmark for Taiwan and the world.  

I Go TravelingⅤ/ A Postcard with Scenery 〈Taiwan 〉

TANG Huang-Chen

TANG Huang-Chen uses personal journeys as the subject matter of her work in an attempt to foreground the illusiveness of memory and history.  She thus subtly expresses the duality of reality and fiction when personal actions are transformed into collective memory.  In terms of overall gender difference in society, Tang’s position also shows a great deal of significance.

Tang’s work realizes what Joseph Beuys called a “social sculpture.”  The art form exists in the imagination and in the exchange of an invented memory between imaginations.

TANG has always consciously held an introspective attitude towards the mainstream discourse in the contemporary art community in Taiwan.  In her we see not only an artist’s autonomy in such a discourse environment, but her sincerity and seriousness toward art creation.

Three Persons and Two Lamps

National Guo-Guang Opera Company

A young playwright instills novel ideas into a traditional form, resulting in a production that creates healthy influence on the forms and aesthetics of Peking opera and even all other traditional theaters.  Three Persons and Two Lamps is an excellent production that, while firmly rooted in tradition, opens up new vista for the form. 

In a specific historic setting, the play treats such eternal themes as the loneliness of man and woman alike, their longing and yearning for someone who understands.  The play flows naturally with delicately touching description of the sexual desires of the maids in an imperial palace.