Lin Hwai-min brings his Italics Ballet to Moscow
Asia’s most famous choreographer brings his Italics Ballet to Moscow. The ballet was initially staged as a show aimed at depicting the philosophy and beauty of the ancient Chinese calligraphy.
The Taiwanese Cloud Gate Dance Theatre is participating in the Chekhov Festival for the third time already and it always fascinates the public with an unbroken series of innovative dances. The theatre was named after a five-thousand-year-old ritual dance of China.
Choreographer Lin Hwai-min, the winner of a plethora of international awards, has exhibited tireless curiosity in the art of calligraphy, promoted it among his dancers, demonstrated the blown-up hieroglyphs in the dance classroom and stimulated the artists to improvise viewing the masterpieces of the old masters. The Italics Ballet is a plastic expression of the ancient writings, an attempt to reproduce the smooth motion of a brush and the transformation of an ink drop in water in movements of a human body. Therefore, Lin Hwai-min acts as a plastic calligrapher using the live artists as living brushes and the stage as a sheet of rice paper.
Instead of decorations, they use dim white light projections as if appearing from under the pen of a master in the stage wings and in the background. The ballet doesn’t feature a variety of scenes but a corporal cryptogram of dancers, diversity of movements and choreographic “pas” continuously remind of the “army” of 150, 000 Chinese hieroglyphs.
Lin Hwai-min came to feel the powerful energy hidden in the masterpieces of illustrious Chinese artists and used it in choreography. The energy is ascending inside a human body in a spiral-like manner making it possible for one to keep on cognizing one’s abilities. The path of cognizing is truly endless.
Photo by: David Hartung for TIMELin Hwai-min is the founder and art-director of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre in Taiwan. The world-famous calligrapher created numerous dances that evoked the unique experience of Taiwan people within the larger Chinese and Asian context. In 2003, he was proclaimed the Outstanding Citizen of Taipei. The Dance Europe magazine referred to Lin as the “Choreographer of the 20th century” and the Ballet Internationale magazine called him the Person of the Year alongside with Merce Cunningham, Jiri Kylian, Pina Bausch, and William Forsythe. Since 2000 Lin has been the art-director of the Novel Hall New Dance Series, which represents famous avant-garde groups of extraordinary world dancers.
