Editor’s Pick: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre at the Kennedy Center
Taiwan's leading contemporary dance company brings its full-length piece, "Thirteen Tongues," to the Kennedy Center.
Named after the oldest-known dance in China, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is widely regarded as Asia’s leading contemporary dance company. Founded fifty years ago, the troupe is known for incorporating its roots in Asian mythology, folklore, and aesthetics with a modern sensibility.
That’s certainly true of the new full-length piece that will mark the company’s return to the Kennedy Center for the first time since 2016.
A choreographed work by Cheng Tsung-lung, who succeeded founder Lin Hwai-min as artistic director in 2020, Thirteen Tongues takes its name from that of a legendary artist and storyteller in 1960s Taiwan.
Cheng grew up two decades later with his mother’s accounts of the artist, known for vivid, dramatic, and imaginative narratives about the various types of people one would encounter in his heyday on the bustling streets of Bangka, Taipei’s oldest district, known for its diversity and tolerance.
Cheng’s mother’s stories are at the heart of Thirteen Tongues, billed as an immersive journey, with art design by Ho Chia-hsing, incorporating the sights, sounds, and vitality of the city — aided by a soundscape by Lim Giong, described as “[fusing] Taiwanese folk songs, Japanese nakashi tunes, and electronic music.” Ethan Wang vibrantly colored projections, moving in grounded positions while traveling in serpentine patterns, provide an added element for dancers to perform against.
The company’s dancers draw on their training in everything from meditation to the ancient Tai Chi-related breathing exercise Qi Gong to internal martial arts, as well as modern dance and ballet.
The piece features “surges of high-energy movement punctuated by moments of exquisite stillness and beauty,” wrote a reporter for the Financial Times, who also quoted Cheng explaining why the dancers appear all in black to start before gradually introducing color to their outfits “until the stage is finally drenched in abstract, polychromatic patterns. ‘The black part is the shadows of my memory,’ [Cheng] replies. ‘Memory starts as a shadow, with a little bit of sound, and then it begins to become more vivid as you recall more and more. The colors bring the memories to life for the audience.”
Thursday, Oct. 20, through Saturday, Oct. 22, at 8 p.m. In the Eisenhower Theater.
Tickets are $49 to $99. Visit www.kennedy-center.org or call 202-467-4600.
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