ArtsCross has returned to Taipei, 13 years after our first project here in the summer of 2011 which followed the initial collaboration between Beijing Dance Academy (BDA) and Middlesex University in 2009. Of course, in those intervening years we returned to Taipei for discussions and seminars, particularly during the British Academy Shift of Balance mobility project which allowed us to develop our thinking about how artists and academics communicate and share in a research process.
And we have met for ArtsCross projects in London, Beijing and virtually in Hong Kong as detailed here. Nonetheless it is significant to be in this place together, to be present in Taipei’s cultural, and specifically dance context and to eat the food, feel the heat, breathe the air – all of those things that lived experience adds to an intercultural choreographic research process.
Some of us have come here from Hong Kong where we presented reflections on selected items from the online ArtsCross archives (rescen.net/artscross) at the SIBMAS conference which was considering the The Dramaturgies of Collecting: Conserving, Restaging and Interpreting the Performing Arts (sibmas.org/conference/hong-kong-2024). This seemed the right time to consider the 15 years of the ArtsCross initiative and how the documentation over those years had almost accidentally become an archive.
One of our Taipei colleagues, TSENG Ra-Yuan presented a wonderful example of both the usefulness of the items in the archive and the absences – those things that arise from both the ArtsCross experiences and the availability of the archive of artistic and academic work. In this case Ra-Yuan followed the development of Free steps by SU Weicha whose work in ArtsCross London 2013 was a beautifully simple traversing of the stage space. The movement material was slow, rich and mesmerising and it offered Weicha an opening into a ten-year project exploring the potential of his original 10-minute work. Rayuan’s presentation can be seen here and the original work from 2013 is available here.
Of course, there have also been changes over the past 15 years: I have moved from Middlesex University to London Contemporary Dance School/The Place where I am their first Visiting Professor; we are based for the first time at the University of Taipei and unfortunately the BDA are not able to join us for this project. But the ArtsCross Directors remain the same and my colleagues WANG Yunyu from Taipei, XU Rui from Beijing and Anna Chan from Hong Kong continue our debates and exchanges, sometimes in immediate agreement, and sometimes working to polish our ideas like pebbles in a bag as Leonard Cohen remarked about his experiences as a zen monk (2001 Binelli, M. Rolling Stone). But this also seems intrinsic to open and honest academic and artistic debate and something I value more as ArtsCross progresses and the shaking world we envisaged in 2009 continues to unfold.
So, ArtsCross Taipei 2024 begins – the choreographers and dancers are in dialogue, but there seems to be fewer words in these opening sessions. Most often the exchanges take place using deeply embedded corporeality and the dance domain’s body of knowledge. The theme recognises this fundamental and foundational aspect of ArtsCross – it is about being human, here now, in a world in constant motion, ArtsCross Taipei 2024 Body in Motion begins.
Professor Christopher Bannerman
See the ongoing ArtsCross Taipei 2024 blog
See the list of Participants
Watch the Artists Statements
Watch the final Performances