Modernity, tradition, identity, society in a Taipei triple-bill

Spring x Molecules x Sociology, Dance Theater, Taipei National University of the Arts
March 8, 2025

Spring x Molecules x Sociology (春天 • 分子 • 社會學) was the unusual title of an evening of three contemporary works by Chien Lin-yi (簡麟懿) and guest choreographer Wong Choi Si (黃翠絲, Tracy) that deal with tradition, and restructuring and responding to it, in different ways. ‘Spring’ refers to emotion or a certain colour palette, ‘Molecules’ to methods and strategies and ‘Sociology’ to situations the individual finds themselves in.

The evening was co-produced by MFA Choreography graduate Chien and MFA performance graduate Chen Chien-an (陳祈安). Woven through it were the allied themes of restraint and liberation, in relation to both tradition and society. Such freedom is something many seek to achieve. As they strive for something new, artists and others may think tradition, background and history can be expunged totally. Others may think they can free themselves from all those unspoken societal expectations and norms. But can anyone fully? How ever much they may try. We are all who we are. Our history and our modern world is what it is.

Tradition is initially very much to the fore in Wong’s THEIR Shoes (那雙), an interesting exploration of the reawakening of female identity and emancipation. We find the excellent Chen in Qiao shoes. The title tells all. Designed to portray a female whose feet have been traditionally bound and which require the wearer to perform on her toes throughout, they are very much an echo of history and female restraint.

More references to opera come in the borrowing of traditional opera movement, and the scene from the Peking Opera Pick Up the Jade Bracelet (拾玉鐲), noted for its delicate pantomime, where the lead female Sun Yu-jiao (孫玉姣) sews the soles on her slippers, attracting the attention of a handsome, would-be suitor.

Chinese opera sounds are increasingly interrupted by those more modern that at first seem to simply unsettle but then buffet Chen more violently as they gatecrash the scene. It feels like they open a door to another world. When Chen is chased by Lu Shao-ke (呂紹可) with a flashlight (joined by Sung Pei-chen, 宋佩真), having now removed her tiny footwear, while it may be clear where or what she’s trying to run from, where she’s running to is much less so. Her racing round, stumbling and falling very much feels like an embodiment of the uncertainty and questions in her mind, a point emphasised when we hear, “How can I be me?” and “How can I express myself” in the soundtrack.

THEIR Shoes segued seamlessly into Shoes (鞋子), also by Wong. Referencing Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Hell is other people,’ in which he says the presence of others inevitably changes our world, and the fact that we cannot change nor always control that can be very frustrating, it’s a short but vivid picture of how people constantly conform and compromise.

Cue more running, reflecting the fact that, sometimes, we try so hard to try and escape something that we forget our original aim. Perhaps even, what we are fleeing from. Finding our own ‘shoes,’ finding which path to take can be difficult. Chen’s blood-stained head reflects those difficulties in a piece that also includes eight pairs of footwear that crash from above, and a brilliant soundtrack choice of Edith Piaf’s ‘Je ne regrette rien.’

After the interval, Chien’s Nameless Practice (無名者的八種練習) explores themes of life and death, and the constant reverberations between them; and how one’s identity and take on issues changes across different life circumstances. In a link to the first half, those life circumstances are linked to wider society, whose frameworks are a form of restraint, even if they are so ingrained into daily life that we don’t recognise their presence.

Chien never loses sight of his theme in a dark and deeply meaningful work that is brim-full of ideas and fabulous images. It’s a real coming together of all the elements. Add in the shadowy lighting by Liu Chin-chen (劉志晨), super costumes by Yu Cheng-zong (余承倧) and Chen Yu-an’s (陳渝安) evocative music, and you have a truly terrific piece that holds the attention from start to finish.

The work’s title refers to the unspoken rule in kabuki that black is an invisible colour to the audience. Nameless Practice itself features a central female, Yeh An-ting (葉安婷), and an ensemble of faceless marginal characters in black. They are there but not there, not there but there, their presence is always felt. They come and go across eight complex, dark, sometimes surreal, sometimes very clear, sometimes less comprehensible situations that blur into one another.

It may form the second half of the evening but Nameless Practice is actually one of those pieces that ‘starts before it starts’ with Yeh, in striking red jacket, performing in front of the curtain during the interval. Sometimes fluid, sometimes broken, the solo has a quality that prevents you looking away. At times it’s like she’s vulnerable (the red does represent kindness, evil and vulnerability) and not fully in control. Whether she’s being driven by something internally, trying to break away from something or someone, or connect, perhaps to the initially distant voices heard over the loudspeakers, is unclear.

Scenes come and go with ease. When the hooded figures in black appear, Yeh runs, then collapses. We seem to be back to trying to escape. But from what? Meaning is enigmatic elsewhere too, Chien neatly leaving enough space within the overall theme for the viewer to construct their own interpretations. And flood my mind they most certainly did.

Although Yeh is the main character, several other dancers play key roles throughout the piece. A super section involves a table with a hidden compartment from which dancers are able to appear and disappear. There’s a gloriously surreal image of bare legs dancing beneath the table, perhaps searching for a foothold, the rest of the Kao Lin Chun-chien’s (高林君潔) body hidden. Elsewhere there’s a great solo by Lee Chin-ling (李沁綾), in black, and a duet with her and and Wang Cian-yi (汪芊懿).

Splashes of colour come when the black figures don coloured jackets. The white, orange, green and lilac additions somehow both humanises them and makes them more troubling in equal measure.

When Yeh herself is hooded and then stripped by the others, it can easily be read as a metaphorical hiding and stripping of identity, freedom and thoughts, although whether that is Chien’s intent is unclear. The end hints at Rite of Spring. Now down to black underwear themselves, the previously hooded figures dance around her, lifting her high before she collapses in a dramatic finale.

Nameless Practice is a fabulous piece, one leaves you breathless and that deserves a wider audience. It would be great to think it might come to the UK sometime.