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Taiwan Season: See You

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 4 Published: 6 Aug 2022 Dance Base Show Dates: 5 Aug 2022-28 Aug 2022

See You is must see. Choreographed by Taiwanese Lai Hung-Chung with his own company, Hung Dance which was founded in 2017. This is a deeply moving piece – mainly in slo-mo – influenced by Tai Chi with elements of popping. This new emerging choreographer is hugely talented and imaginative with enormous ambition as he tackles traumatic subject matter, loss, longing and confrontation on a universal scale through a crowd of dancers.

The simplest of moves can achieve an epic status

To start the show, a blue light shines on a group of dancers huddled together with one girl on top, the rest of the stage in shadow and throughout the superb lighting by Tsai Chao-Yu, plays an atmospheric part. The dancers are all clad in shapeless white long trousers and tops, their feet in socks, the costumes designed by Yang Yu-Tei. The movements are simple and slow, reflecting Tai Chi, where one can appreciate their full physicality. It is profoundly emotional and made one reflect how the simplest of moves can create powerful choreography and achieve an epic status. There are no showy tricks but an essential honesty in how various relationships are portrayed. At times, there is hypnotic music, at others, frenzied, to express the dancers’ differing states.

Unfortunately, this piece narrowly missed gaining a fifth star. After an outstanding first twenty minutes it degenerated as it went on far too long with no sense of dramatic structure. But this choreographer will go far in the future as he masters his craft and this piece is certainly one to watch.

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The Blurb:

Lai Hung-Chung is one of Taiwan’s most talked about young choreographers. This scintillating production for Hung Dance justifies the acclaim. It is a non-stop feast of intensely expressive motion and sensations inspired by ideas about loss, longing, confrontation and evasion. Watching the dancers’ bodies is like reading their minds. The difficulty that resolutely modern people have in connecting may be their strongest connection. The entire effect is both feverishly intimate and yet somehow coolly detached, qualities enhanced by handsomely sculpted lighting and the textured pulsations of an original and rhythmically varied sound score.