Taiwan students in two evenings of top-notch dance: Focus Dance Company 2023

Dance Theater, Taipei National University of the Arts
March 17 & 18, 2023

For their 2023 iteration, Focus Dance Company (焦點舞團), the graduate touring company of Taipei National University of the Arts (國立臺北藝術大學) presented two programmes under the artistic directorship of Tsai Hui-chen (蔡慧貞), both concluding with a reworking of Ihsan Rustem’s Bolero and also featuring Tsai Po-cheng’s (蔡博丞) new Dreaminess (無意之境), alongside shorter student pieces. Under the odd-sounding cover-all title of Anti-Neverland (喧宵日夢), simply ‘Dreams’ would have been far better, it was two evenings of fine dancing.

Composer Maurice Ravel called his Bolero “an experiment in a very special and limited direction,” one that consisted wholly of “orchestral tissue without music… one very long, gradual crescendo.” It is also one of a select few pieces of music that choreographers seem inevitably drawn to. But its greatest appeal, its power and repetitiveness, is also its danger. It almost always wins hands down. Few choreographers have even got close to it.

Originally created for NW Dance Project in Portland, Oregon in 2016 and here reworked for a larger cast of fourteen, Rustem’s Bolero, which closed both shows, bucks the trend, however. The choreography is appealing and very musical, but his real trump card is that he never takes things too seriously. Decidedly tongue-in-cheek, it’s art that also entertains.

The oddball moments start even before the curtain rises with the sight of a man laying prone, his legs peeking under the bottom of the drape. When the curtain rises, a single red rose lands falls to the floor with such a thud that you jump.

Ever shifting between duos, trios, and full company synchronicity, it was brilliantly danced. New, interesting phrases just keep coming. The big, brisk movement calls for bags of energy, which it got.

The quirky, inventive moments just keep coming. Great use is made of a low upstage ‘wall’ which sometimes makes the dancers behind look like glove puppets. Red roses appear time and again. Sometimes held out from the wings, one apparently makes its own way along that wall, one duet has a man holding one in his mouth.

It being Bolero, there are some sexual hints too, most notably thrusting pelvises from the men. It would be easy to take it all too far but Rustem never oversteps the mark, the warmth and wittiness always remains.

Like the music, it slowly builds. As it nears the end, a seven-woman ensemble, unison section is superb. Another for the men, just as good, follows. Then together for a final thrilling ride of fast-moving dance that fills the stage to the conclusion. It ends with a man tossed high, the sudden black out timed perfectly to leave him in mid-air.

Tsai’s Dreaminess (無意之境) ensured the first half of both programmes ended on a high. After opening slowly with figures moving through the dark landscape backed by a swirling upstage mist, the choreographic ideas flow seamlessly.

Several times, bodies form into groups before breaking apart and reforming elsewhere. One that presents as a sort of multi-headed, pulsing amoeba is especially effective.

To super music by Mario Batkovic, there are a lot of meetings and partings, unexpected reveals and hides, among the cast of eighteen. Duets emerge from nowhere and disappear just as magically. Many of them are fabulous, it’s just a shame they too often get a bit lost in the crowd.

It is all beautifully lit by Liu Chih-chen (劉志晨), whose work contributes hugely to the slightly other-worldly feel, although the piece does get less dream-like as it goes along.

The student choreography came loaded with ideas and fine intent. However, there was sometimes the usual inexperienced choreographer tendency to start promisingly but then fail to develop their theme truly effectively as they put too many ideas into their choreographic pot. In more than one case, the dance transformed into a series of very watchable but near-abstract sequences that could have happily slotted into any of the works. Vague, mostly one-line programme notes only rarely illuminated. Lighting tended towards the shadowy and dim.

In an evening of largely modern dance, the two contemporary ballet pieces stood out for simply being different. Best in terms of choreography and musicality was A Moment by Liao Chen (廖晨), danced to Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite. A busy work, it’s full of entrances and exits with the first movement in particular series of momentary (as the title suggests) short solos and small group work. It’s understandable to want to give fellow classmates as much visibility as possible but a tendency to fill the stage, never one duet but two side-by-side, never one solo but two or more, does dilute the work a little.

Equally busy was Annette Lyn Seow’s (蕭樂恩) Iridescent, a title that matched well the bright choreography that also came with a nice, airy feel and a lot of jumping. Seow particularly likes explosive sissones. The very grounded Graham-style runs on and off sat uncomfortably with the lightness of the rest of the dance, however. Chang Hung-mao (張宏茂) stood out in a complex solo, although the largely gender neutral choreography did not always do the men any favours.

Elsewhere, I was very taken by Pink Elephant by Chang Pai-yi (張百毅), which opens and closed with a rather ingenious silhouetted elephant fashioned out of dancers’ bodies, with a female dancer riding it. When it disassembles and the lights come up, it turns out the pachyderm, or at least its constituent performers, are indeed, at least in part, dressed in pink. Their sharply articulated movement and isolating of joints sat happily alongside more fluid moments.

Edging towards dance theatre, the intelligent and well-thought through In that case (既然那樣的話) by Li Chieh (李杰) featured solo dancer Shi Peng-hui (施芃卉) wrestling with her mind. After a phone sounds, its rings then fading away, she sits with it, dances with the receiver in a very effective embodiment of what I presume is an imagined verbal conversation with someone distant, who we never see. After a more expansive moment, the core idea becomes powerfully visible again as Shi silently talks to herself in one of those imaginary, practice conversations that we’ve all had at some time as she tries to decide what to do, whether to call back.

In Resonance (共·振), Liao Chien-yu (廖婕妤) dresses her dancers in black trousers and white, unbuttoned, formal shirts that fly as they leap. Bodies do not so much tremble, as the programme note suggests, but shake and throb, presumably the resonance of the title. The patterning and structuring are quite impressive.

Listen, I’ll Speak (你聽，我說) by Seow and Lai Pei-lun ( 賴珮綸) starts very promisingly with gestural movement, some quirky, some frantic, bodies almost seeming to ‘speak’ the text of the accompanying ‘Find Me’ by Forest Blakk, about having a soulmate and finding each other again. The idea isn’t persevered with or ever really returned to, however, the work turning into essentially abstract modern dance that seems to be about movement and little else.

Edged Wings (比翼島) by Wu Tsung-yang (吳宗揚) opens beautifully with he and Lai edging across the stage like they are drifting in a current, floor-bound, limbs and bodies entwined, all to echoey drips and gurgles. But a subsequent change in movement vocabulary does not sit comfortably.

There was more entwined bodies in Inseparable* (繾綣), created and danced by Jhou Han-wei (周漢威) and Hsu Yi-hsuan (許懿璇).

In Idealism (理想世界), set to ‘Tokyo Ghost Stories’ by Aravane, Wen Lin-ling (翁琳伶) makes clever use of a single light swinging on a rope; the only illumination. As much as Chen Jhao-ting (陳釗婷) dances beautifully, the vision of a sort of utopian nirvana, a world without sadness, worries, stress and much more, leaves little solid to grab hold of.

Completing the two programmes are See, Sea by Wen Lin-ling (翁琳伶), Welcome back (歸來迎) by Jhou Han-wei (周漢威) and SWEET TOOTH by Lai Pei-lun (賴珮綸) and Li Chieh (李杰).

Besides choreographing and dancing in the many pieces, Focus Dance Company performers also take on administrative duties, tour arrangements, marketing and ticket sales, all important aspects that a dance artist needs to understand to be successful, and work that I am sure will hold them in good stead for the future.