13 tongues
The programme of FAM 23 is offering the show 13 Tongues, by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan.
As a child in the 1980s Cloud Gate Artistic Director Cheng Tsung-lung would contribute to the family business by helping his father sell slippers on the streets of Bangka/Wanhua, the oldest district of Taipei. Bangka/Wanhua was known for its vibrantly diverse and bustling street scene that embraced religious and secular life, rich and poor, work and play, legal and illegal activities. The young Cheng was transfixed by his mother’s accounts of the legendary 1960s street artist and storyteller known as “Thirteen Tongues” who had adopted Bangka/Wanhua for his informal stage. It was said that “Thirteen Tongues'' could conjure up all the Bangka/Wanhua characters - high and low born, sacred and profane, men and women - in the most vivid, dramatic, and fluently imaginative narratives. Thirty years on Cheng ’s fascination for “Thirteen Tongues” became his inspiration as he transformed his childhood memories into dance.
Beginning and ending with the sound of a single hand bell, the music accompanying 13 Tongues ranges from Taiwanese folk songs to Taoist chant to electronica. The stage is awash with projections of brilliant colors, shapes, and images and the dancers gather, interact, separate and re-gather in a thrilling representation of the clamor of street life. As the religious heritage of ancient Bangka/Wanhua fuses with the secular space it is today so time appears to dissolve. The spirit realm and the human realm also coalesce as the audience is taken on an immersive journey - via imagination and storytelling that recalls the art of “Thirteen Tongues” - through centuries of human endeavor, behaviour, and belief.
This tour is supported by the Ministry of Culture R.O.C. (Taiwan) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Spain.
Photos by Liu Chen-hsiang and Lee Chia-yeh.
Choreography: Cheng Tsung-lung
Music: Lim Giong
Art Design: Ho Chia-hsing
Lighting Design: Shen Po-hung
Projection Design: Ethan Wang
Costume Design: Lin Bing-hao
Voice Coach: Tsai Pao-chang
Premiere: March 11, 2016, Taiwan International Festival of Arts at National Theater, Taipei, Taiwan
Commission: National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei
This tour is made possible in part by grants from the Ministry of Culture, R.O.C. (Taiwan)
About 13 Tongues
"13 Tongues is a sensationally big, indulgent, and visually arresting expression of cultural memory."
The Times
"13 Tongues brilliantly combines the simplicity of tradition with technological innovations."
La Croix
"13 Tongues demonstrates beautifully the extraordinary, elemental quality of the Cloud Gate dancers, energy coursing through their butter-soft, titanium-strength bodies, limbs curling like tendrils of smoke."
The Guardian
"Cheng’s movement language is remarkable, showing exceptional range and masterful structure, . . . Each dancer is of soloist standard and when given their spotlight opportunity they leap into action with lithe, flexible, and powerful bodies. It’s magic."
SeeingDance
"The choreutic structure of 13 Tongues reveals a skillful use of historical forms which does not aim at a negation of the past or the present, but at the developing of a form that is both ancestral and original."
Persinsala
"Visually, it's all striking, it's like watching a moving work of art emerge in the hands of an invisible calligrapher."
Svenska Dagbladet
About the company
"Talent and skill require no translation... it’s only right that they should be shared with the rest of the world."
The New York Times
"When you're talking about Cloud Gate, magic is not too strong a word."
Time Out
"One of the finest dance companies in the world."
The Globe and Mail
"An extraordinarily exciting, brutishly physical contemporary dance company."
San Francisco Examiner
"[The dancers] have such stringent, elastic control that they can suddenly blast upwards into high, light jumps that for a moment you fancy might not come down again. The grace of it is, in a way, balletic, but its evasion of the norms of gravity, its total fluidity, suggests that there is a new book of the human dancing body waiting to be written with t’ai chi training."
The Daily Telegraph
"Dancers of the Cloud Gate possess a control and articulation that verge on the superhuman…In fact, they have the power to change your metabolism."
Chicago Sun-Times
"What dancers! Their assurance, fluidity and discipline are simply breathtaking. The mixture of traditional Asian gesture, martial arts-inspired leaps, kicks and slaps and the audible breath of the dancers creates a mesmerizing language before our eyes."
Durham News & Observer
"Cloud Gate leaves you sitting breathlessly on the edge of your chair."
San Jose Mercury News
"This company gets to you. . . . A rousing standing ovation."
San Francisco Chronicle
"This is a company that you will enjoy, fall in love with, and want to see again."
Ballet-Dance Magazine
"So touching that one can not help crying . . . tears of joy – one’s heart nearly explodes from such a great theatrical experience."
Aftenposten
"Wholly irresistible!"
Dance News
El acceso solo está permitido a mayores de cinco años.
Si lo desea, puede consultar las condiciones generales de compra y normas de sala.
Para cualquier duda en el proceso de compra puede escribir a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. o llamar al teléfono 922 568 625 de lunes a viernes de 10:00 a 14:00 horas, excepto festivos.