Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan to Bring FORMOSA to The Dance Center

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago presents Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, performing Formosa, March 2 and 3 at the Harris Theater of Music and Dance.

Formosa has its world premiere November 24 in Taipei, with additional performances in other cities in Taiwan in December and one performance in Iowa February 25.

Performances are March 2 and 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Drive. For tickets and information, visit colum.edu/dancecenter or call 312-369-8330.

Choreographer Lin-Hwai min's newest evening-length work, Formosa, takes the homeland as inspiration for a work of abstract beauty born from land and lore. Using gesture, script, song and other elements from the island as raw material, Lin and dancers create a lustrous, transfigured sphere in which only the universal remains a playground of love and life, mediated by tragedy, hope and rebirth. Recorded music by award-winning indigenous singer Sangpuy serves as the soundtrack as the dancers stomp, sway, dash and dart. With unparalleled grace, they mingle in intimations of community, making tribal ritual and urban bustle seem as one. Luminous projected images of Chinese character typefaces, interlocked and overlapped, provide the stunning visual backdrop. Devoid of specific meanings, they merge in teeming thickets to evoke a host of imagery: mountains and rivers, earthquakes and tsunamis, ancient inscriptions, a black sun. They seem to imply writing as a precarious vehicle for memories, which blur and recombine at the whim of history's wind. At the work's end, a blue sea appears amid the characters, only to wash them away in the waves.

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago is the city's leading presenter of contemporary dance, showcasing artists of regional, national and international significance. The Dance Center has been named "Chicago's Best Dance Theatre" by Chicago magazine, "Best Dance Venue" by the Chicago Reader and Chicago's top dance venue in 2014 by Newcity, and Time Out Chicago cited it as "...consistently offering one of Chicago's strongest lineups of contemporary and experimental touring dance companies." Programs at the Dance Center are supported, in part, by the Alphawood Foundation, the MacArthur Fund for the Arts and Culture at Prince, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Martha Struthers Farley and Donald C. Farley Jr. Family Foundation, the Irving Harris Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest that is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional contributions from the Illinois Arts Council and the Crane Group. Special thanks to Friends of the Dance Center for their generous contributions to the Dance Center's work.

Pictured: This fun photo shows "Cloud Gate at Cloud Gate" from a previous visit to Chicago; photographer is Lindsay Schlesser.

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