Into the fields with Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre
Company:
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre
“When you’re talking about Cloud Gate, magic is not too strong a word”
—Time Out London
Rice
Sep 16—19
1hr 10min
Tickets start at $20
The 24 dancers of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre perform a lyrical tribute to the island’s essential crop, combining modern dance, ballet, martial arts, and qigong against a backdrop of pastoral video and Taiwanese folk song.
On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre takes grain, field, and flower as verdant muse in this celebration of the life cycle and natural beauty of the island’s essential crop. Dramatically poised against stunning video vistas of the Chihshang growing region, 24 dancers cross-pollinate modern dance and martial arts, ballet and qigong to become wind-rippled paddies, erotic agents of springtime germination, and fire walkers returning scorched seed to soil. Wielding bamboo sticks, recast as field implement, slender stalk, and weapon, they prod the seasons and coax valley rains as Taiwanese folk songs and Bellini arias waft in the wind.
Set design by Lin Keh-hua
Lighting design by Lulu W. L. Lee
Projection design by Ethan Wang
Costume design by Ann Yu Chien and Li-Ting Huang
Rice is commissioned by Wen C. KO, and co-produced by the National Theater & Concert Hall, the National Performing Arts Center, Taiwan, R.O.C.; New Vision Arts Festival, Hong Kong; Esplanade –Theatres on the Bay, Singapore; Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London; and Hellerau - European Center for the Arts Dresden, Germany
