‘How to choose tomatoes?” asks the voiceover, as three bodies writhe around the stage. “How to find the fake, acquired and invented tomato? First, the leaves. Second, the shape. Third, feel with your hand. Fourth, check the bottom. Good luck and enjoy your tomato.” The dancers twist and turn, squeezing and sucking tomatoes, throwing them or pouring a bucket of them over themselves. A live camera brings the audience into the show as the performers dance together in movements that are abstract, absurd, lustful, funny and confronting.
“Every time we’re on stage,” says Chou Kuan-Jou, the Taiwanese dancer-choreographer who created the show, “we can really feel the energy from the audience because we have a lot of eye contact with them.” The show, named Tomato, is an experimental dance piece exploring sexuality, gender and desire, all influenced by how sexism, shyness and feminism affect her home country.
Tomato drew rave reviews at its 2022 Edinburgh fringe festival debut, and is now returning to the UK for two shows at the Taiwan festival in London. Its creator is a young Taiwan-born artist who teaches schoolchildren and elderly women dance, as well as working with disability advocacy groups. Speaking from Taipei, Chou says Tomato was first inspired by discussions about menstruation, pregnancy, sexuality and social expectations. But as she began exploring her own sexuality, the show has morphed and the lineup has changed. Reviewers have noted the “sudden shifts” in the mood of the show, which seem to have left audiences delightfully shocked, but also a little confused by the multiple themes and the chaotically abstract performance.
Chou suggests that this is a fair reflection of her own changing experience in terms of the subject matter. “Tomato is about exploring lust with a sexualising body and experimenting with the fluidity of it. In these three years, the show has been changing with my life, my personal body experience.”
Tomato has also taken on darker themes, as Chou learned of disturbing online trends in Taiwan and Korea, from the sharing of videos showing violence against women to Taiwan’s belated #MeToo movement. The latter has drawn in dozens of high-profile figures, sparked a nationwide conversation and prompted changes in the law.
The conversation was good and necessary, Chou says, but she would have liked to see it go further, pushing against social conservatism to more freely discuss sex and desire, particularly for women, groups such as the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities. Instead, it was framed around victims and perpetrators. “What about the complexity of sexuality?” she says. “That’s my goal right now, to open the discussion.”
Chou says the show received a very different reception in Edinburgh, where it was met with laughter. “Sometimes I feel it’s too much,” she says. As for her more conservative home country, she says: “In Taiwan, I can feel the insecurity and intense atmosphere in the audience. They are like a big wall I have to punch through. A lot of people stay for the Q&A section, but I sense they don’t know how to transform their feelings and thoughts into words because the discussion of desire or sexuality is not really familiar in Taiwan.”
Chou says her school pupils sometimes come to her for advice, or let her know they’ve seen her work online. Members of her Chinese cultural dance class have come to her shows, but they are often too shy to talk about what they saw. Another work, Free Touch, invites members of the public to sit with her and be open to making and receiving physical contact. She recently took it to Perth, Australia, setting up in a corner of Hyde Park, where some extraordinary moments of interaction occurred.
“It’s a play on boundaries and trust, of intimacy in the public space. It also reminds me of a Tinder date, because sometimes you can really feel the connection.” Chou acknowledges that there is an element of risk involved. “Yeah, it’s dangerous,” she says. “But I want to see the dangers and understand them.” She pauses then adds: “I’ve also signed up for martial arts.”
• The Taiwan festival runs for 15 days from 12 April at London’s Coronet theatre. Tomato shows on 23 and 24 April
