The Montpellier Danse festival welcomes for the first time the oldest contemporary dance company on the island of Taiwan. Signed by Cheng Tsung-lung, the creation “Lunar halo”, to be seen from June 28 to 30, questions the possibility of the coexistence of the body and technology.
The invitation is not necessarily political (even if we imagine that on the Beijing side we will judge otherwise) but it is certainly historic: Montpellier Danse welcomes, for the very first time, the Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan. Founded in 1973 by Lin Hwai-min, “Cloud Gate” is the oldest Asian contemporary dance company, and clearly one of the most prestigious, demanded throughout the world.
Having always combined Eastern and Western aesthetic vocabularies, it is unique in training its (exceptional!) dancers simultaneously in contemporary dance, ballet, qi gong (traditional Chinese breathing gymnastics), martial arts, meditation and for several years hip-hop dances. In 2020, Lin Hwai-min gave up his place at the head of the company to Cheng Tsung-lung, who therefore further broadened the scope of their possibilities. Having graduated from the National Taipei University of the Arts, he has danced in the company since 2002 and directed the young ballet from 2014. Created in 2019, Lunar helloof which Montpellier is hosting the first in France, was born from the combination of two phenomena, one owing everything to nature, the other to technology.
An omen
So, while he was conducting research for a work for the Sidney Dance Company evoking the moon, Cheng came across the Chinese words for the lunar halo on the internet: the hairy moon! Rare in the Taiwanese sky, this optical phenomenon caused by light refracted through thicknesses of ice crystals is a source of multiple interpretations. In a poem by Su Xun, a writer of the Song dynasty, in the 11th century, Cheng then finds this passage: “When the base column is wet, rain is coming; when a halo appears around the moon, wind is joining the party.” In short, the lunar halo is a sign, an omen. And the choreographer of the time wondered what this wind would be, good or bad, new in any case, for our time.
A personal experience gave him the answer: “I remember one night in 2017 when I lay on my couch absorbed in my phone without moving for almost seven hours”says the choreographer whom he met last fall in London, where he was presenting Lunar hello. “The phone was the center of my universe!”
A dialogue
So, Lunar hello he intends to showcase both the contrast and the dialogue between the organic world and the digital world. “On stage it is sometimes a question of opposition, sometimes of communion”confides Cheng. “But seen from the room, since the cohabitation of technology and the body produces an artistic form, in other words beauty, it is no longer a question of a struggle, but of a state of affairs.” The choreographer has joined forces with the talents of Jam Wu and Ethan Wang for respectively astonishing giant and mobile screens, and powerful and aesthetic projections.
Visions of the lunar star, of course, turning into a metaphysical vortex, but also of a naked man of titanic size as a marmoreal mutant… the images of Lunar halo are out of the ordinary. The expressionist and rigorous lighting of Shen Po-hung and the costumes, here minimalist, there post-industrial, by Chen Shao-yen also contribute. For the music, Cheng called on Sigur Rós, a huge post-rock group that, to put it briefly, we will describe as “Icelandic Radiohead”.
A cosmogony
“I wanted to infuse my show with an atmosphere of the end of the world, of emptiness, so I thought of this group of which I have been a fan since the discovery of its collaboration with Merce Cunningham, this record with the strange name, Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do”, says Cheng Tsung-lung who went to meet them in Iceland. “When I took my rental car there, the rental company told me to be careful of the strong winds. It was a perfect omen!” He selected 25 pieces from their repertoire, extracts, layers, sometimes very brief snippets and the group agreed to create for and with him, from his storyboard, the sounds, lines and connections that might be missing from the partition. Ethereal, climatic and strangely, hypnotically suggestive, it is available on platforms under the title of 22° lunar halo.
As it would be a shame to spoil a show whose power, both sensitive and cerebral, is due to the progressive revelation, we will say nothing more… Except that the dance has cosmogonic accents, and is overflowing with geneses, life, human, fire, science, fire, death… and life, the human afterwards, changed, reformulated, increased? “I let everyone make their own interpretation but, personally, new technologies don’t worry me… as long as we never forget to dance! smiled Cheng. To put it another way, as long as you don’t forget to live, as long as you don’t let yourself be controlled by these new technologies, they help to expand your world!
