Cloud Gate is the name of the oldest known dance in China. In 1973, choreographer Lin Hwai-min adopted this classical name and founded the first contemporary dance company in the greater Chinese-speaking community: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, also known worldwide as Cloud Gate.

 

Cloud Gate dancers are trained in meditation, Qi Gong, internal martial arts, modern dance and ballet. Through Lin Hwai-min’s innovative choreographies, the company transforms ancient aesthetics into a thrilling modern celebration of motion.

 

Acclaimed as “Asia’s leading contemporary dance theater” (The Times), and “One of the finest dance companies in the world” (The Globe and Mail), Cloud Gate tours extensively. At home, in addition to regular seasons in theaters, Cloud Gate stages annual free outdoor performances in cities and villages of Taiwan, drawing an average of 30,000 people per performance.

 

After a blaze destroyed Cloud Gate’s rented studio in 2008, more than 4,000 public donations came in to support the company to build a home base—the Cloud Gate Theater. Inaugurated in 2015, the Theater presents performances from worldwide, and opens its verdant outdoor space to the public, attracting tens of thousands of visitors every year.

 

 

Set to the piano scores by Erik Satie and other composers, White Water is a lyrical dance of pure movement that flows beautifully as its title suggests. The curtain opens to a projected colour image of a flowing river; it slowly transforms into black and white. In serenity and in turbulence, whiteness of waves and ripples streams out of the blackness. Green netting and girds used for digital design interrupt the flow of water, thus revealing the process of creating virtual images and illusion of light, providing a pleasant surprise to the dance.

Against the constantly evolving projection, dancers in white swirl and jump in various mesmerising sections of solos, duets and group dances; their arms wavy, tails of their skirts flapping, echoing the surging of white water. From time to time their bodies are fragmented by the projected green lines, adding mysterious aura in this otherwise bright and charming work.

Towards the end, as dancers reverse the choreography of the first section, the projection dissolves into the initial image of a river in black and white, and then recovers its original colours. Shinning in great simplicity, White Water is a gem among Lin Hwai-min's choreographic works.

 

 

 

In July 1960, Dmitri Shostakovich travelled to Dresden to compose music for a film about the Bombing of Dresden. Fifteen years after the war, this East German city remained a site of the horrific destruction. He wrote the String Quartet No. 8 in C minor in three days. Confiding to a close friend, Shostakovich said: “When I die, it’s hardly likely anyone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself”.

 

Lin Hwai-min was electrified by the intense sadness of the music when he first listened to this best-known piece among Shostakovich’s complete string quartets in the 1990s. Frustrated by the political suppressions, massacres and genocides of the 21st century, Lin decided to choreograph to the quartet, and told Cloud Gate dancers that it would be a requiem. While researching on the literature of the music, he was absolutely shocked to learn that Shostakovich did intend to write it as a requiem.

 

Calling the work Dust, Lin seems to lament that in the face of cruelty, human beings are fragile and insignificant like drifting dust. Smoke whirls in the air. Dancers clad in black and dark brown costumes, stagger and crawl, making brief appearances out of the smoke in the dim lighting. Against projection of desolate images of strong colours, they collapse and struggle to stand up. Once and again, they cluster in lines and groups for protection, only to be broken down. Towards the end, they hang themselves in a standing position, with their mouths opening and closing like fishes out of water. Smoke slowly swallows them up.

 

While White Water flows like a movable celebration of life, Dust cries out from the darkest of the night, evoking memory of Goya's Black Paintings. Premiered in 2014, two of Lin Hwai-min’s latest creations make up a powerful double bill with great contrast in styles and contents.

 

 

LIN HWAI-MIN
Founder / Artistic Director

 

Lin Hwai-min was first known to the Taiwan public as a fiction writer. He started his modern dance training at the age of 23, while working on his MFA degree at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. He founded Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan in Taipei in 1973.

 

A self-taught choreographer, Lin often draws from Asian cultures and aesthetics to create works with contemporary resonance. Under his direction, Cloud Gate tours extensively to international acclaims.

 

Among the honors Lin Hwai-min has received are the Samuel H. Scripts / American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award, the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Ministry of Culture of France, the Honorary Fellow Trinity Laban, London, and honorary doctorates from six universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He was also celebrated by the Time Magazine as one of “Asia’s Heroes.”