Dance Critique: "Air Plant – The Performative Power in Contemporary Art," "Free Steps – Listening to Bodily Displacement," "Traces and Collisions"

Text | Hsiang-Chun Fan, dance critic, freelance writer

Source: https://talks.taishinart.org.tw/juries/fxj/2018022602

The concept of "dancing space" originates from the inspiration of two entirely different works. One is Ryuseioh Ryu's "Dancing Space Mud Wall," performed at the Shancheng Theater in 2014, and the other is Chen Chieh-Jen's work "Resonating World" at the 2016 Taipei Biennial. These two works, although in different forms – one a performance and the other a video installation – both create significant bodily impact in space. How is it possible to encapsulate them under the term "dancing space" or, in other words, "the space of movement"? Having previously discussed each work, I won't elaborate here. In simple terms, I perceive the dancing space as a lively field. The term "lively" here is not determined by the presence or absence of living individuals but rather by the existence of countless dense, growing, interweaving, regenerating lines that breathe. Lines weave into surfaces, and then it becomes space.

In early 2017, during the closing week of "Air Grass – The Performative Power in Contemporary Art," I once again felt the essence of this dancing space. It happened in an old house in Arts Village B in the northern district, where footage for Su Wei-Chia's ten-year choreography project "Free Steps" (Zhang Junyi) and sound creation (Peng Yesheng) for "Free Steps – Listening to Bodily Displacement" were recorded. Additionally, Peng Yesheng's sound installation "Traces and Collisions" was presented.

Old houses inherently possess a charm – a charm that enhances the presence of time and the allure of the invisible. Old houses seem to be the best places for sound, movement, and all those invisible or once-existing elements. Everything happens in the unseen time, existing moment by moment and then passing away. Sitting on an old wicker chair diagonally to the left inside the entrance, wearing Peng Yesheng's sound installation, looking at the empty courtyard in front, with only the rusted and twisted iron bars placed by artist Xu Ruiqian, you hear footsteps, collision sounds, bodies intertwining, and the grinding sound of the floor – sounds that seem to come from nowhere. You contemplate the sounds, wondering about the noises, the people who may have existed in this house. Where did they go? What were they doing? Do they still exist?

With these thoughts, you enter a small room on the left side of the wicker chair, seemingly added on. On the black wall, there are images of two female dancers from Su Wei-Chia's "Free Steps," slowly intertwining and changing positions. The two dancers coordinate, communicate, and converse to become a center of gravity, a captivating moment resembling the anemone-like group of female dancers in the theater performance of "Free Steps." However, in this room, the addition of Peng Yesheng's sound brings the once-seen and imagined visuals and tactile sensations into a deeper experience within the viewer. The intertwining, changing of gravity, coordination, communication, and sensations in this room are almost inside the viewer's body.

Exiting the room and looking diagonally to the right, a surprisingly striking or perhaps deliberately arranged scene unfolds before your eyes: a partially damaged bare wall revealing the flat surface filled with red bricks and gravel underneath. Rough and irregular, the damaged part oddly resembles the beautiful curve of a female dancer's waist. "Flat/Curve" and "Rough/Irregular" – these two contrasting pairs seem to be the best metaphors for the intertwining, grinding sounds heard in the small room and the relationship in sensations. When these visual and tactile phenomena in the individual works of the artists are broken down and reassembled into another set of spiritual dynamics, they possess the wall of the old house, the entire space, and the old house becomes a dancing space.

Artists in Arts Village B in the northern district, familiar with the essence of their respective fields and the sensory collaboration, hierarchy, and relationships within, are able to widen the "gap" emphasized in curatorial concepts. By breaking down the boundaries of their own art medium's perception mode (if it can be seen as a kind of mother culture to some extent), extending their own tentacles, and letting differences practically occur in the gap, they gradually establish an indescribable chaotic somatic sensation within the viewer. The works that occur in Arts Village B cannot be simply categorized into any art form such as performance, sound, or installation. It is a dancing space without live dancers but with the sensations of movement, existence, and communication with the viewer.