WCdance
DANCE OUR OWN DANCE
After spending ten years in the United States, including his seven-year career as a full-time dancer in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Wen-Chung Lin returned to Taiwan and started his own dance company WCdance with a vision to create" an intimate dance company that focuses on the purest forms of physical movement to continuously explore physicality and movement that is unique to contemporary experience, as well as to cultivate a physical aesthetic that embraces sensitivity and humanity."
In 2008, WCdance made its world debut with an evening-length work entitled Small. Five dancers squeeze into an acrylic box of three cubic meters and dance inside the box to embody and perform a "micro-theatre," guiding viewers to concentrate on the dance, the human bodies, the exquisite movements, and the theatrical dynamics through a microscope. Taipei Times acclaimed it as " a highly polished jewel of a work" and later selected this production to be one of the "if you missed these performances you really missed out" amongst Taipei's year round productions in 2008. Since then, Wen-Chung Lin has started his Small series with annual productions, including Small Songs (2009), Small Puzzles (2010), Small Nanguan (2011), and Small End (2013).
Following the success of Small, the Small series production No.2 Small Songs (2009) once again impressed the audience by using thirteen love songs, across different musical styles from both the Eastern and the Western cultures, as a motif to frame the art of dance. An ancient Nanguan love song, Looking at the Bright Moon, in Small Songs gave Wen-Chung Lin an idea to further explore the beautiful hybridity between traditional music and modern dance. Small Nanguan thus marked the beginning of this series for which Wen-Chung Lin not only conducted field research with his dancers, but also made a bold suggestion that a Nanguan music master should dance with the dancers on stage. Hong Kong Wenhui Newspaper described that " (Small Nanguan) turns the baggage of tradition into an artistic inspiration, extracting the essential 'beauty' of the Nanguan tradition and revealing it with delicate sincerity to touch the souls of the audience."
After Wen-Chung Lin returned from a retreat in Bali and India in 2013, he decided to conclude the Small series with Small End. He peeled away any pre-existing physical movement as well as choreographic vocabulary to highlight the body in its pure form as a free flowing microcosm. Considered to be the most original work by WCdance, Small End won a nomination for the top fifteen productions in the 12th Taishin Arts Award (the most important Arts Award in Taiwan).
Small Nanguan 2, which premiered at the 2014 Taiwan International Festival of Arts, was the sequel to Small Nanguan. It further deconstructed the performative expressions of traditional Nanguan and modern dance. Although the edgy experiment in Small Nanguan 2 received mixed reviews, it unexpectedly associated WCdance with the term "tradition" as it became the only modern dance company to perform at the 2014 Changhua Traditional Music Festival and the Cross-Strait Folk Festival as well as the 2015 Taipei Traditional Arts Festival. Another successful production created in 2014, Long River, blended the Chi concept of Chinese folk dance and the structure of modern dance, and eventually won the 13th Taishin Arts Award in 2015.
The artistic focus of WCdance was not limited to local aesthetics, as it sometimes developed choreographic productions abroad. Invited by the Chicago-based dance company The Seldoms, WCdance stayed in Chicago for one month in 2012 to work with The Seldoms and created The Small Series and Its Friends, which was later presented in both Chicago and Taipei. WCdance is also one of the companies frequently representing Taiwan at international events, including the 2009 Association of Performing Arts Presenters in New York, the 2011 Festival d'Avignon Off in France, the 2012 Festival/Tokyo, the 2014 Arts Festival of Osaka University, and the 2015 Macau Arts Festival.
Starting from the Small series, which features the physical dynamics within a limited space, WCdance develops a universal style beyond national and cultural boundaries with its roots in Taiwan as it searches for a unique physical expression of Taiwan's modern dance. "Dance our own dance" is WCdance's belief in the purest physical form of dance and its desire to represent "Taiwan" on the international stage with its irreplaceable uniqueness.
DANCE OUR OWN DANCE
After spending ten years in the United States, including his seven-year career as a full-time dancer in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Wen-Chung Lin returned to Taiwan and started his own dance company WCdance with a vision to create" an intimate dance company that focuses on the purest forms of physical movement to continuously explore physicality and movement that is unique to contemporary experience, as well as to cultivate a physical aesthetic that embraces sensitivity and humanity."
In 2008, WCdance made its world debut with an evening-length work entitled Small. Five dancers squeeze into an acrylic box of three cubic meters and dance inside the box to embody and perform a "micro-theatre," guiding viewers to concentrate on the dance, the human bodies, the exquisite movements, and the theatrical dynamics through a microscope. Taipei Times acclaimed it as " a highly polished jewel of a work" and later selected this production to be one of the "if you missed these performances you really missed out" amongst Taipei's year round productions in 2008. Since then, Wen-Chung Lin has started his Small series with annual productions, including Small Songs (2009), Small Puzzles (2010), Small Nanguan (2011), and Small End (2013).
Following the success of Small, the Small series production No.2 Small Songs (2009) once again impressed the audience by using thirteen love songs, across different musical styles from both the Eastern and the Western cultures, as a motif to frame the art of dance. An ancient Nanguan love song, Looking at the Bright Moon, in Small Songs gave Wen-Chung Lin an idea to further explore the beautiful hybridity between traditional music and modern dance. Small Nanguan thus marked the beginning of this series for which Wen-Chung Lin not only conducted field research with his dancers, but also made a bold suggestion that a Nanguan music master should dance with the dancers on stage. Hong Kong Wenhui Newspaper described that " (Small Nanguan) turns the baggage of tradition into an artistic inspiration, extracting the essential 'beauty' of the Nanguan tradition and revealing it with delicate sincerity to touch the souls of the audience."
After Wen-Chung Lin returned from a retreat in Bali and India in 2013, he decided to conclude the Small series with Small End. He peeled away any pre-existing physical movement as well as choreographic vocabulary to highlight the body in its pure form as a free flowing microcosm. Considered to be the most original work by WCdance, Small End won a nomination for the top fifteen productions in the 12th Taishin Arts Award (the most important Arts Award in Taiwan).
Small Nanguan 2, which premiered at the 2014 Taiwan International Festival of Arts, was the sequel to Small Nanguan. It further deconstructed the performative expressions of traditional Nanguan and modern dance. Although the edgy experiment in Small Nanguan 2 received mixed reviews, it unexpectedly associated WCdance with the term "tradition" as it became the only modern dance company to perform at the 2014 Changhua Traditional Music Festival and the Cross-Strait Folk Festival as well as the 2015 Taipei Traditional Arts Festival. Another successful production created in 2014, Long River, blended the Chi concept of Chinese folk dance and the structure of modern dance, and eventually won the 13th Taishin Arts Award in 2015.
The artistic focus of WCdance was not limited to local aesthetics, as it sometimes developed choreographic productions abroad. Invited by the Chicago-based dance company The Seldoms, WCdance stayed in Chicago for one month in 2012 to work with The Seldoms and created The Small Series and Its Friends, which was later presented in both Chicago and Taipei. WCdance is also one of the companies frequently representing Taiwan at international events, including the 2009 Association of Performing Arts Presenters in New York, the 2011 Festival d'Avignon Off in France, the 2012 Festival/Tokyo, the 2014 Arts Festival of Osaka University, and the 2015 Macau Arts Festival.
Starting from the Small series, which features the physical dynamics within a limited space, WCdance develops a universal style beyond national and cultural boundaries with its roots in Taiwan as it searches for a unique physical expression of Taiwan's modern dance. "Dance our own dance" is WCdance's belief in the purest physical form of dance and its desire to represent "Taiwan" on the international stage with its irreplaceable uniqueness.