Founded in December 2004, Horse Dance Theatre has established a distinctive profile through evocative physical movements and exhibiting a distinctive performance style in a series of works that display unfettered and unbounded creativity. The New York Times has called them “a charming and imaginative young all-male dance troupe from Taiwan.” They were nominated for the 6th Annual Taishin Arts Awards and honored with the Performing Arts Award.
Since 2012, the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) has started to explore the concepts of cherishing the tradition and the continuous pursuit of innovation. Under its current music director Shao-Chia Lu, NSO is committed to evangelize the works of Taiwanese composers and accumulate the shared cultural assets for the music industry in Taiwan.
Huang Yi is a young choreographer with incredible potential. Aside from choreography, he is also involved in video recording, photography and installation. He excels at incorporating multi-layered images and delicate body movement, and revealing his unlimited potential in the interweaving of image and dance. Lin Hwai-min, founder of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, called him “a child of awe” for his unlimited potential. Huang is also the resident choreographer for Cloud Gate 2 now.
Since its first Kun opera production, Willow Dreams of Plum, in 2004, 1/2 Q Theatre has been nominated by Taishin Arts Award and other arts awards with its experimental approach by rediscovering Kun opera with methods from installation arts. 1/2 Q Theatre reads classical Kun opera texts and crosses over with experimental approaches from theatre, visual art, dance to glorify the beauty of Kun opera. As Kun opera has never been of people’s attention in Taiwan theatre scene, 1/2 Q Theatre gradually opens the audience’s eyes to “all male drama,” and tries to turn a new leaf of the “reinvented Kun opera” with creative and lively attributes.
National Theater Concert Hall (NTCH) has been established as an international cultural exchange platform, and cultivates expertise in arts programming. NTCH invites prominent groups and artists all over the world and promotes Chinese artists to international phases. In Taiwan, it is deemed as the best platform that attracts creative power from different fields. Around the globe, it has become the representative of Taiwanese performing arts.
Taipei Chinese Orchestra (TCO), founded in 1979, is the first professional Chinese orchestra in Taiwan and has a reputation for its versatility and artistic excellence. TCO has entered a new era since renowned composer Yiu-Kwong Chung was appointed as general director in 2007. TCO tries to redefine the traditional idea of Chinese music with innovative and adventurous programming, which helps expand TCO's repertoire and establish its uniqueness. In addition, TCO is also committed to fostering young musicians from Europe, Asia and North America to work with TCO and offering a platform for developing high quality contemporary Chinese music.
Creative Society was founded in 1997 by a group of experienced directors, playwrights, scholars, theater administration professionals as well as press specialists in Taiwan. it promotes and cultivates the originality of scripts and the theater culture, and develops new drama aesthetics based on the reflection of social context.
UTUX means spirit in the universe in Atayal culture. UTUX, Pan-Spirit’s Men for Music and Dance was founded in 2011 by theatre director and playwright Pisui CIYO with a group of members, who are passionate about culture of Taiwanese aborigines and performing arts. UTUX focuses on the aspects of “artistic creation” and “cultural succession,” and strives for transformation and innovation by turning UTUX into a cultural site.
Chien Kuo Group Foundation for Arts and Culture is founded to promote humanity aesthetics and living arts. At the moment, it focuses on promoting traditional opera performance, Chinese ink painting and Taiwanese tea culture. A Dream Under the Southern Bough is a collaboration of Chien Kuo Group Foundation for Arts and Culture, theatre director and playwright Wang, Chia-Ming, and Suzhou Kunqu Opera Theater. It is surprising that the whole 44 highlights of the original A Dream Under the Southern Bough have been restored completely, it has never been performed on stage over hundreds of years. In this production, Chia-Ming Wang does not make any change on the original dialogues or structure, but condenses 44 highlights into 15 ones through the usage of colors and pacing. This will be the ever first production of A Dream Under the Southern Bough, and it finally completes the entire Kun opera.
The goal of Tang Mei Yun Taiwanese Opera Company is to “present the traditional art with innovation.” The scripts, tunes, costumes, art design and settings are set in accord with humanity as well as historical authenticity. In recent years, by mixing orchestra, traditional Chinese music instruments, the arrangement and vocal music of Chinese opera, and the stage technology of the modern theater, the traditional aesthetics of Taiwanese opera, which has the performers as the dramatic subject is well highlightes.
Wistaria Cultural Association aspires to advocate public policy on cultural assets and to nurture related professionals by promoting research, teaching and publication in relation to historical and cultural assets. The association aims to imbue cultural assets with new life and value and to deepen the cultural content of our society. Since 2003, Wistaria Cultural Association has been commissioned by Taipei’s Department of Cultural Affairs to run the cultural heritage, Wistaria Tea House, in alliance with Mr. Yu Chou. Over the years, the association has been actively perpetuating Wistaria Tea House’s cultural significance and public value through organizing art salons, cultural forums and tea ceremonies. On the other hand, Center for Asia Pacific/Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University aims to promote the integration of Asia at the level of knowledge production. It will foster exchanges and interactions across the straits, in the Chinese-speaking world, within Asia and around the globe on a larger scale.
Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek is an artistic and social project that is organized by the artist, Mali Wu, in collaboration with the Bamboo Curtain Studio. Prior to this project, Mali Wu curated The Floating World: Tracing the Tamsui River (2006), An Environmental Art Action along the Tropic of Cancer (2006 to 2007), Taipei will still be a Lake Tomorrow (2008), and other environmental art actions. In addition to its efforts in integrating global and local wisdom, the Bamboo Curtain Studio, founded in 1993 and re-organized in 2005, aims to break through the status quo and make a difference by virtue of artistic actions. It hopes to become a platform for environmental sustainability on which dialogues, experiments and actions can take place.
Chin-Pao Chen is an artist who specializes in photography. He graduated from the Department of Photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is now a teacher at Teng-Kung Elementary School in Tamsui while attending the MFA graduate program at Taipei National University of the Arts. Since 1999, Chen has participated in several solo and group exhibitions domestically and overseas. His works have evolved from objective documentary photography, to Neo-Realist portraiture, to the present series of photographic projects that emphasize photography as a medium and dialogue with contemporary art. Over the years, he has received honors and awards from the School of Visual Arts in New York, Taipei Photo Festival, Taipei Arts Award, Higashikawa Prize in Japan, and Asian Cultural Council.
Ming-Jiun Tsai is a Taiwanese independent curator of the new generation. She graduated from the Department of Arts and Design of National Hsinchu University of Education, received her two master degrees from the graduate school of the Department of Fine Arts, Tunghai University, and in curating, Goldsmith, London University. Since 2006, she has been the curator of many exhibitions in Taiwan and abroad, including Question in Site (2006), Ambiguous Childishness (2007), Beyond the Map (2009), Mirror, mirror on the wall, TAMTAM8 (2010), In/side/out (2011), and A Gathering (2012).
Amy Cheng lives and works in Taipei. In 1995, she started writing art criticism and related articles. She began curating exhibitions in 2003 and has curated, in chronological order, Invisible City in 2003, Traversing—Ruins and Civilizations in 2004, Taipei Biennial: Do You Believe in Reality? In 2004, Borders in 2006, The Heard and the Unheard—Soundscape Taiwan at the Taiwan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2011, etc. In 2010, Amy Cheng and Yueh Lo, a music critic, co-founded The Cube Project Space in Taipei. On the one hand, they seek to establish long-term partnerships with artists and cultivate local culture. On the other hand, they aim to promote dialogues and exchanges between Taiwanese contemporary art and the international art scene.