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. In 2020, CHENG Tsung-lung succeeded LIN as the company’s Artistic Director, bringing together his creative works with traditional roots and excitingly innovative perspectives from the digital and globalized world. In 2023, Cloud Gate ushers in its 50th anniversary.
Cloud Gate
Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Cloud Gate
Cloud Gate dancers receive training in meditation; Qi Gong, an ancient breathing exercise; internal martial arts; modern dance; and ballet. Manifesting in choreographies, the company transforms ancient aesthetics into a thrilling and modern celebration of motion.
Cloud Gate has toured worldwide with frequent engagements at the Next Wave Festival in New York, the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, the Moscow Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Russia, the Movimentos International Dance Festival and the Internationales Tanzfest NRW directed by Pina Bausch in Germany. International press acclaims the company as “Asia’s leading contemporary dance theater” (The Times), and “One of the best dance companies in the world” (FAZ).
CHENG Tsung-lung – Artistic director
CHENG Tsung-lung, choreographer and artistic director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan - one of the most renowned international contemporary dance companies from Taiwan - has learned to listen anew during the isolation of the pandemic. He has drawn inspiration for a new work from the sounds of the forest - the insects and birds, the wind in the trees: ‘Sounding Light’ is the result of his reflection on the (im)balance between human civilisation and nature. His choreography traces the course of a day full of sunlight - refracted by clouds or leaf shadows. The dancers themselves provide the majority of the soundtrack as a natural element of their performance. While their movements imitate nature, birds or insects, their bodies become instruments: In collaboration with composers LIM Giong and CHANG Shiuan, they use voice and breath, finger snapping and hand clapping. In this way, the dancers acoustically and visually create the impression of a breeze, forest animals, falling rain or flowing water.
Since 2020, choreographer CHENG has succeeded the legendary LIN Hwai-min as artistic director of the famous dance company, which can now be seen in Weimar for the second time after an acclaimed guest performance in 2003. The European premiere of the production will also mark the start of a six-part dance and performance programme featuring Taiwanese artists as part of Kunstfest Weimar 2024.
Productions
SOUNDING LIGHT
Sounding Light by Cloud Gate’s Artistic Director CHENG Tsung-lung is an ode to nature and a relearning of how to listen with our senses and minds during the pandemic. The choreography follows a day filled with sunlight interrupted by clouds and shadows. Dancers create a natural soundtrack with their voices, breath, percussive bodies, offering acoustic and visual impressions of breezes, forest creatures, and flowing water.
This is CHENG’s first major work since succeeding LIN Hwai-min in 2020, illustrating Cloud Gate’s pioneering approach and CHENG's artistic vision. It offers a pure and captivating performance that connects the delicate balance between human civilization and nature.
WAVES – in Collaboration with Daito MANABE
WAVES, Cloud Gate’s latest creation, showcases the innovative collaboration between Artistic Director CHENG Tsung-lung and Japanese digital artist Daito MANABE. This groundbreaking piece blends meditative and oriental practices with Western dance, exploring the hidden realm of the body through AI-generated music derived from dancers' neural electrical signals converted into data. WAVES pushes the boundaries of human movement, offering audiences a fresh perspective on the fusion of dance and technology. The piece presents Cloud Gate's cutting-edge choreography to an international audience.
LUNAR HALO
The Taiwanese company Cloud Gate triumphed with a masterful work on the relationship between men and screens. Gripping. – Le Figaro
Lunar Halo, created by Artistic Director CHENG Tsung-lung in collaboration with Icelandic band Sigur Rós, had its European premiere at London's Sadler's Wells and received high praise from critics. Featured in the Telegraph’s “Best Dance of 2023” list, it captivates with its profound and dystopian aesthetic.
It recently had its French premiere at the Montpellier Dance Festival, where it was acclaimed as the most enthusiastically received show of the year and lauded by Le Figaro as one of the festival's top three performances. At the end of November, it will be showcased at Danse Danse Montreal, continuing to captivate audiences with its unique blend of contemporary dance and luminously, bleakly beautiful music.
13 TONGUES
As a child in the 1980s Cloud Gate Artistic Director CHENG Tsung-lung would contribute to the family business by helping his father sell slippers on the streets of Bangka/Wanhua, the oldest district of Taipei. Bangka was known for its vibrantly diverse and bustling street scene that embraced religious and secular life, rich and poor, work and play, and legal and illegal activities. The young CHENG was transfixed by his mother’s accounts of the legendary 1960s street artist and storyteller known as “Thirteen Tongues” who had adopted Bangka for his informal stage.
It was said that “Thirteen Tongues'' could conjure up all the Bangka characters -- high and low born, sacred and profane, men and women -- in the most vivid, dramatic, and fluently imaginative narratives. Thirty years on CHENG’s fascination for “Thirteen Tongues” became his inspiration as he transformed his childhood memories into dance.
Beginning and ending with the sound of a single hand bell, the music accompanying 13 Tongues ranges from Taiwanese folk songs to Taoist chant to electronica. The stage is awash with projections of brilliant colors, shapes, and images and the dancers gather, interact, separate and re-gather in a thrilling representation of the clamor of street life. As the religious heritage of ancient Bangka/Wanhua fuses with the secular space it is today so time appears to dissolve. The spirit realm and the human realm also coalesce as the audience is taken on an immersive journey -- via imagination and storytelling that recalls the art of “Thirteen Tongues” -- through centuries of human endeavor, behavior, and belief.