2020 Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival “Site-specific Dance”
Dancers producing the most beautiful sceneries by blending their bodies with the city’s landscapes
Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival breaks the mold again with innovative programs! This year marks the start of a new venture with "Site-specific Dance", an environmental dance series. We invite local dance troupes to subvert the theater performance format. During March and April, these troupes will perform in public venues that include Huangpu Veterans Quarter in the Fongshan Dist., Pier-2 Art Center, Dadong Arts Center, and a select MRT station, presenting 6 performances with 16 sets on a small-scale, outdoor stage that compose a most beautiful cityscape.
"A Hundred-Year-Old Paradise" by Solar Site Dance Theatre enters an old Japanese-style house in the Huangpu Veterans Quarter in Fongshan Dist. Old houses are vessels of historical development, and recall the intimacy and alienation between people in bygone days. Performing at the Pier-2 Art Center, Hsu Chen Wei Dance Company's "It's Your Turn to Dance" will awaken dancing cells in all of us and lead everyone in interactive rhythm and dance. "No Plastic Bag" by Bemove is a socially themed monologue performed in a combination of music, dance, Nakasi, and drag-queens. Plastic waste here is a used as a metaphor for the cyclical relationship among different roles in the city. "Shadow of Time" by Solar Site Dance Theatre reproduces scenes in the dark corners of our memory by interweaving light and shadow, Through a dialogue constructed by space, objects and stories, the performance pays tribute to the past and anticipates the wonders of the future.
In the Outdoor Plaza of Dadong Arts Center, the "Image of Dadong" performed by Xin-Chuan Kids' Dance Company features its surroundings in an interactive dance that combines artistic lifestyle with local cultural characteristics. By ingeniously connecting culture, environment, and art, this performance utilizes the elements of dance to connect Dadong’s past with its present. The last performance here is "The Light of Life" by the Somatic Theater Company. Under the beautiful glass ceiling of "The Dome of Light" at Formosa Boulevard Station, the performance combines different styles of physical movement to present a poignant piece that presents the natural beauty along with virtual dreamscapes in the bustling MRT station.
"Site-specific Dance" is an artistic feast that belongs to everyone. Dancers grace the spring afternoons with performances that invite the public to participate in the open spaces and experience the beautiful dialogue between the body and the environment. On weekends between March 21st and April 4th, we invite you to see how dancers transform into living, public art, and produce the most beautiful sight by blending their bodies into the cityscape.
