It’s a hard thing to take over a company forged in one choreographer’s image. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan was founded in 1973 by the pioneering Lin Hwai-min, who retired as artistic director three years ago. His successor, choreographer and dancer Cheng Tsung-lung, now leads the company as it celebrates its 50th birthday.
Cheng marks the occasion with the haunting beauty of his own 2019 creation Lunar Halo, a piece that continues the traditions established by the company of distinctive dance and stunning visuals. But he also brings something new – a slightly darker aesthetic, a more direct engagement with the contemporary world.
Lunar Halo, named after the ring around the moon that is thought to portend change, and set to music by Sigur Rós, concerns itself with the effects of technology on life. The designs by Jam Wu, which set videos by Ethan Wang looming over the dancers, constantly emphasise the disjunction between the mysterious, transfixing effects of the digital world and the messy physicality of the real.
It opens with a man bending backwards, his body contorted. Under variegated patterns on the screen above that seem to hypnotise them, others join him, moving like some creature in the deep, linked together so that their heads look like a spine. A woman breaks free from another group in a marvellous solo, her feet rooted to the spot but her body loose and stretching sideways.
At different moments, giant screens fall from above, sometimes showing the dancers replicating in an ever-growing group, sometimes depicting one giant naked figure who dominates the action, looking down impassively like a ghostly avatar. The choreography is detailed and questioning, as the figures on the reflective stage seem at once cowed by the images surrounding them and anxious to break free from their imprisonment in this immersive landscape.
Lunar Halo is perhaps marginally too long, but it is fascinating, and signals a new chapter for a company that still has its own unique style.
