Earth and Moon

What were you doing on May 29? You were on camera.

Here's the view from Nasa's Epoxi spacecraft 31 million miles out:

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Cloud Gate 2's 'Oculus'

Cloud Gate 2 will present Oculus at LIberty Square. The dance performance takes place tomorrow evening (Saturday) at 19:30. Admission is free to the public.

Details are reported by Diane Baker of the Taipei Times:

It is almost impossible to watch Oculus and not think of what might have been, for its creator died of leukemia just as he was making a name for himself as a choreographer. He had been diagnosed with the disease in 2004, only months after becoming artistic director of Germany’s Staatstheater Kassel Dance Company.

Cloud Gate founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) established CG2 in 1999 to foster young choreographers and dancers and provide education and outreach programs for schools and communities throughout the country. Under the leadership of the troupe’s late director, Lo Man-fei (羅曼菲), Wu was one of those young choreographers tapped to create works for CG2.

[ . . . . ]

Oculus explores the very human desire for love and acceptance. Wu’s unique choreographic language is a mixed bag of tics, flat-footed shuffles and scurrying, hunched shoulders, clasped hands and awkward leaps — it is not the graceful, airy movements so often thought of as dance. Wu’s movements, like Lin’s, are more firmly rooted in the earth and draw energy from it, even as he appeals to the heavens. He set a frenetic pace for the dancers, interspersed with moments of stark stillness. The 12 sections are divided into carefully structured solos, duets and ensemble work.

Screens will be set up to ensure a view for the entire audience. Still, early arrival is recommended. Cloud Gate performances routinely sell out and free performances can draw crowds of over 10,000.

Parental advisory: the performance features 'bare breasts.' (But that's nothing your kids haven't seen before, is it?)

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Ai Weiwei

China's most famous living artist speaks his mind in 'Cultural Revolutionary,' an interview in today's Guardian (UK).

In the West, Ai's name was once known only in art circles. After his collaboration with the architects Herzog & de Meuron on Beijing's Olympic stadium - it was his idea to make it look like a bird's nest - his fame spread, especially when he gave an interview in which he announced that he had 'no interest' in the Olympics or in the Chinese state's propaganda - and that, no, he would not be attending the opening ceremony. Even so, it remains hard to convey the extent of his fame in China. .... Ai Weiwei is not only an artist but also an influential architect, a publisher, a restaurateur, a patron and mentor, and an obsessive blogger (he is read by 10,000 people every day).

And then, on top of everything else, there are his politics. Ai Weiwei's father was Ai Qing, the great poet who, during the Cultural Revolution, was exiled to a desert labour camp for being the wrong kind of intellectual. For many years his son lived in another kind of exile, in America. Then, in 1993, Ai returned to Beijing to the bedside of his dying father. But if the authorities imagined he would now retire quietly to his studio, they were wrong.

Ai says that people who think he now 'hates' the stadium he designed are mistaken. He feels fine about the quality of the design. But, as he tells Rafi Cooper, the planning of the city, and the nature of the regime behind that planning, is another story.

While some gasp at Beijing's extraordinary new skyline, with its statement buildings and rows of cranes, Ai remains singularly unimpressed. 'It's like another revolution,' he says. 'The speed of it. But if you look at the scale of it, you can tell that no time has been devoted to thinking. It has not been done gracefully. It's rough and short-sighted and temporary. Cities always reflect human history. We can't really judge it now but I'm sure there's going to be a lot of saying sorry later. [What we need to know is] who's building it? How do the developers get the land? It's so political. In 1949 most properties lost their owners. They were either kicked out or killed. The nation owned the property. Since then the state has just sold it to people who can afford it. So property should be [according to the government] for the whole nation, yet the government takes the profit. No political, philosophical or moral aesthetic is involved. It's just: let's be rich first. Except that people are finally starting to question: who is getting rich?'

In the past Ai has likened the government to the Mafia. Does he worry about saying such things? He looks quietly dismissive. 'I will not be held back. Not saying things is not good for anybody. I believe every citizen should state their mind. China has never been a democratic society, so candour and responsibility have never been encouraged. People feel hopeless, even about trying to take part in the political process, and they have done for generations.'

More than anything else, Ai believes that the nation is still paying a price for having collectively punished the intellectual classes during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. 'The nation is in bad shape,' he says. 'We are still paying the cost in terms of public discussion. We are still paying in every respect.'

Ai describes his life in America fondly. He returned to China in 1993 when his father became ill.

'Friends had told me how it had changed. Yes, there were new roads, more products, cars. But some things had not changed. No freedom, no exchange of ideas. It's still like that today, and it makes me sad. I don't mind material change but how people's minds change is the most precious thing.'

Will this ever change? 'Eventually.' In his lifetime? He grins. 'I will never die when there is not democracy!'

The complete article provides a compelling description of life in three environments: China in its Cultural Revolution period, America in the closing decades of the twentieth century, and China today. Ai Weiwei is a telling observer and chronicler of humanity. Rafi Cooper provides a chonology of the artist's life and work.


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Spotlight on Oppression

Andrew J Nathan, in a new article in The New Republic entitled 'Medals and Rights,' looks at the China that will soon be hosting the Olympics.

The efflorescence of creativity that foreign visitors will see in Beijing in August is not a challenge to Party control. It enables that control. The lively art and music scenes, colorful newsstands, crowded bookstores, stylish clothing, experimental dance, innovative architecture, sexy advertising, rampant consumerism, luxurious housing, ebullient schlock, even the considerable scope for academic inquiry: this lightly patrolled free zone is not the antithesis but the twin of the permanent crackdown on the political frontier, where the few who insist on testing the regime are crowded to the cultural margin and generally ignored. In this sense the energetic new Chinese art that has caught the imagination of Western buyers, with its pictorial irony and cynicism, repudiation of history, detachment from the world, and love of stunts, is not the challenge to those in power it is sometimes construed to be. Rather, it is a secret joke that the regime shares with the artists and their audience--part of a new social contract that allows the children to have their sly fun so long as the grown-ups run the house.

. . . .

To be sure, the Olympics so far have not entirely worked out the way the planners intended. Beijing's bid in 1993 for the 2000 games was defeated at least partly on human rights grounds (although Frank Ching implies in China's Great Leap that bribery from the winning city of Sydney had more to do with it). It is not clear whether Beijing made explicit human rights commitments in its second bid. [. . .] Whether or not human rights were explicitly included, Beijing certainly made pledges that it would not fulfill.

. . .

Nathan is the co-editor of How East Asians View Democracy (Columbia University Press). The full article, a book review, may be viewed here.

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To My Students:

Congratulations.

And thanks for everything you taught me.

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Hsinchu Philharmonic: Wings of Gold

2008 June 15 Sunday 14:30
Concert Hall of the Hsinchu Cultural Arts Centre
Hsinchu, Taiwan

Wings of Gold
A concert by the Hsinchu Philharmonic
Orchestra and Guests

謝孟潔 Meng-Chieh Hsieh, soprano
龔彥銘 Yen-Ming Kung, piano
唐博敦 Alton Thompson, conductor

蕭泰然 Tyzen Hsiao (b. 1938)
Angel from Formosa

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto 4 in G Major, opus 58
Yen-Ming Kung, piano

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Aria: 'Caro nome' from Rigoletto
Meng-Chieh Hsieh, soprano

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1804-1908)
Scheherazade

www.ticket.com.tw

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Earth and Moon

What did you do yesterday? You were on camera.

Here's the view from Nasa's Epoxi spacecraft 31 million miles out:

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Oslo Opera House

Norway's new center for ballet and opera opened with a flourish this past weekend. The Norway Post reports:

The building was opened by King Harald [V], who said the new Opera House has become a monumental landmark. . . Among the guests were Denmark's Queen Margrethe, Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson and Finland's President Tarja Halonen.

The construction of the new 38,500-square meter (415,000 sqare feet) opera house is the largest single cultural-political initiative in contemporary Norway. It took five years to build and the cost is estimated to 500 million Euros. The result is an extraordinary building in white marble with a slanting roof surface that rises directly from beneath the waters of the Oslo fjord. In addition to a variety of performances in a 1,350-seat auditorium and two smaller auditoriums, this will also be the first opera house in the world where visitors can take a walk on the roof.

. . . .

The Oslo Opera House is designed by the acknowledged Norwegian architectural firm Snoehetta.

After the gala opening on Saturday, the first performance in the new opera house is the world premiere of the ballet A Modern Place by renowned Norwegian choreographer Ingun Bjørnsgaard on Stage 2. This is followed on May 24, when Worlds Beyond by the celebrated Czech choreographer Jirí Kylián will open on the Main stage. Orfeo will be the first opera to be performed in the new opera house, with its Stage 2 premiere on May 29. From April 26 there will also be held Operafest on the Main Stage with selected arias, duets and choruses. The first opera on the Main Stage will be Don Carlo in September 2008, a co-production with The Royal Opera House Covent Garden and The Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The opening season lasts from April 2008 till June 2009 and will be a showcase for Norway and its cultural life, offering top singers, dancers and musicians. Among the guests this first year is Cecilia Bartoli, Bryn Terfel, Berliner Philharmoniker with Sir Simon Rattle, René Pape, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim and Neeme Järvi.

The event was commemorated in a new government stamp.

Official Site: Oslo Opera House
http://www.oslooperahouse.com

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The CSO Resounds

The Internet offerings of the Chicago Symphony have really sprouted lately. I've mentioned other venues for audio here, courtesy of the London Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, Deutsche Grammophon and other providers. Now the Chicago Symphony, under principal conductor Bernard Haitink, has successfully launched its own label, CSO Resound, featuring recorded performances by the orchestra. The initial offerings include:

Bruckner: Symphony 7
Mahler: Symphony 3
Mahler: Symphony 6
Bernard Haitink, conductor

Shostakovich: Symphony 5
Myung-Whun Chung, conductor

'Traditions and Transformations'
Bloch: Schelomo, Hebraic Rhapsody for Solo Cello and Large Orchestra
Sharav: Legend of Herlen
Harrison: Pipa Concerto
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite, opus 20

Silk Road Ensemble
Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Wu Man, pipa
Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Alan Gilbert, conductors

These audio records are available for download at the iTunes store and on disk from the CSO site. Choose from standard CD stereo audio or SACD, a five-channel stereo hybrid from a five-channel stereo hybrid developed by Sony. SACD an be played on your standard CD player, but it has aural data encoded on the disk that helps to 'reproduce the precise acoustic signature of the performance space.'

The site also offers free audio of BP Chicago Symphony radio broadcasts.

You will find free video as well. The CSO has begun making available video files documenting the orchestra's acclaimed Beyond the Score multimedia series. All series productions feature the orchestra and narrator and series director Gerard McBurney. Discussions currently available online include:

Bartók: Miraculous Mandarin
Pierre Boulez, conductor
Daniel Allar, actor
54'

Mozart: Piano Concerto 27 in B-flat Major, K 595
Jeffrey Kahane, conductor and piano
Susanna Phillips, soprano
Tim Gregory, actor
63'

Video files may be downloaded in either Windows Media (.wmv) or QuickTime format (.mov).

The orchestra also has its own video page at YouTube.

Some people in the Windy City have been busy. Make a bookmark and enjoy!

CSO Resound
cso.org/resound
1 312 294 3333

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Ancestors Day

Here's wishing all my friends in Taiwan a peaceful day with family of all generations.

2-28 Peace Park
Taipei, Taiwan 台灣 台北

©2007 Alton Thompson 唐博敦

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