Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan will be performing FORMOSA at Istana Budaya Kuala Lumpur, 16th-17th March 2019! 

Be the first in Southeast Asia to watch FORMOSA which premiered in Taiwan in November 2017. And toured 6 US cities; Wolfsburg, Germany; London; Paris; and Lisbon earlier this year, 2018.

Date & Time:
16th March 2019 (Sat) 8:30pm
17th March 2019 (Sun) 3:00pm

Venue:
Panggung Sari, Istana Budaya Kuala Lumpur

Performed by:
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

Co-produced by:
- National Performing Arts Center
  National Theater & Concert Hall (Taiwan)

- National Performing Arts Center - National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying)

EXCLUSIVE PACKAGE BY INXO

Limited seats with nice view + Exclusive Souvenir provided by Cloud Gate + Purple Cane Tea

Seats of the package are marked in dark green color, which is Rows E/F/G, kindly refer to the seat map below; 

ABOUT FORMOSA

In the 16th century, gazing out from the decks of ships off the coast of Southern China, Portuguese sailors saw an island thick with mountains and trees, rising from the sea. “Formosa!” they exclaimed—“beautiful!”—anointing the verdant place that would come to be known as Taiwan.   

In this full-length work choreographer Lin Hwai-min uses Formosa, a beautiful island beset by earthquakes, typhoons and societal rifts, as a metaphor of the world we live in and to contemplate an epigram from the Buddhist Diamond Sutra:

     All things contrived are like dream, illusion, bubble, shadow,

     and as dewdrop or lightning. They should be regarded as such.

While recorded indigenous songs, contemporary music, reading of poems about the land, and lore of the island serve as the soundscape, luminous projected images of Chinese character typefaces provide visual backdrop. The characters are mainly names of mountains and rivers, cities and villages of Taiwan; they interlock, overlap and merge in teeming thickets to evoke a host of stunning imagery.

Against the lustrous, transfigured sphere, dancers mingle in intimations of community, making tribal ritual and urban bustle seem as one and transforming the stage as a playground of love and life, mediated by tragedy, hope, and rebirth.

Towards the end, blocks of characters drop onto stage, like landslide during earthquake, then characters gradually fall apart into dispersed strokes and lines. They seem to imply writing as a precarious vehicle for memories, which blur and recombine at the whim of history’s wind.

A blue sea appears, only to wash the broken characters away in raging waves. The dancers exit, projection vanishes, leaving a white, empty stage just as the dance opens. 

Taking into account the votes of 41 international dance critics for highlights of the 2017/18 season, Lin Hwai-min’ FORMSA is selected as the “Production of the Year 2018.”

tanz yearbook

A stunning new work....severe beauty, the delicate patterning, the sensuality and then the shocking (though still beautiful) violence of the dance was so mesmerizing that unrelated styles of music intertwined, enhancing the otherness of the other. 

Los Angeles Times

A danced poetry by the master Lin Hwai-min... Formosa is timeless, rounded and universal.

For eternity. 

tanz