Experimental Theater, National Theater, Taipei
April 19, 2025
In 2013, Su Wei-chia (蘇威嘉), co-founder of Taiwan dance theatre company HORSE (驫舞劇場), embarked on what was planned as a ten-year choreography project, FreeSteps. In each of its various iterations from the initial Free Steps (自由步, 2015), through Free Steps – Body Scenes (自由步 – 身體的眾生相, 2017); Free Steps – NiNi (自由步 – 盞燈的景身) and Free Steps – As I Dance (自由步 – 當我盡情搖擺, both 2019), the latter celebrating the grassroots artistry of everyday seniors; the contemplative Free Steps- Sunlight, Trajectory, Figures (自由步 – 日光、軌跡、身影, 2021), and more, he drew on the skills and characteristics of different dancers, a new dance landscape emerging each time.
Photo Wang Pi-cheng
In Free Steps – murmur (自由步 – 百問 零式), the final chapter, Su performs alone for the first time, the seventy-minute piece inspired by the travails of, and reflections on, the past years.
It takes a lot for a solo to hold an audience for over an hour, let alone one where the soundscape (by Blair Ko, 柯智豪) is little more than a series of crashes, bangs and isolated discordant chords. There’s also no set save for a chair, used sparingly, and single spotlight (lighting by Liu Chia-Ming, 劉家明) wheeled around. And yet Su does just that in a remarkable, introspective performance that engages throughout.
It opens dramatically. A crash. A blackout. When the light returns, it’s in the form of that spotlight on wheels, pushed around by Chen Pei-yung (陳珮榕), and under which Su dances. Memories of Free Steps – NiNi (自由步—盞燈的景身), performed outdoors under a street light come flooding back.
Within the silence of Ko’s sounds, one hears the whispers of the years of the project. You somehow share the space with Su.
Su’s body is fluid and undulating, but his feet are initially fixed. When he does move from the spot, the light follows him. Later, in those moments when he moves away from it and the gap increases, he’s inevitably drawn back to it like a moth to a flame.
The choreography is minimalist in the way short phrases are repeated but complex in how they change and new ones are introduced. At times it looks like improvisation but it most definitely has a rhythm and a sequence, the movement changing from time to time, easily and without pause.
Photo Wang Pi-cheng
Su appears totally absorbed especially in a section that sees him boogieing as if in a night club. A more animated section roughly halfway through appears gestural, a little aggressive even, but it’s unclear as to what he is trying to say. It’s like he’s trying to tell us something. A reflection of the difficult moments in the project perhaps. Here, as elsewhere, Su is totally invested in the moment. Driven on, he eventually goes to the ground.
Free Steps really lives up to its name in a free-flowing faster section when he fair bombs around the stage now pursued by his light in an effort to keep up. The sound of his breath, and the percussion from his feet, are clearly audible in between the bangs and clangs of the soundscape.
It ends quietly. Su now devoid of his t-shirt. At peace. Arrival. Free Steps. Journey over.