Delivering an unbearable lightness of being – or non-being – with an apocalyptic end (in a maelstrom of green), Wind Shadow is less dance and more a fusion of installation art and kinetics; a visually stunning spectacle sans emotion, sans words, sans context, sans an anchor of any kind.

A collaboration between Lin Hwai-min, (Founder and Artistic Director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan and internationally acclaimed choreographer) and Cai Guoqiang (Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing), Wind Shadow evolved from over a hundred ideas Cai sent Lin, black snow, black waterfall, black rainbow … ideas contained in a couple of words or very short sentences.

Cai’s words and phrases, in Lin’s hands, become installation art in lieu of dance; a largely monochromatic mis en scene, eighty minutes of stunning, dramatic, thought-provoking, morbid, disturbing, pleasing, unsullied and then corrupting (or corrupted) fractured, fragmented panoramas and viewpoints.

Violence and art (or violence in art?), it begins innocuously enough, lightly enough, a stark white backdrop framing sculpted, androgynous bodies (humans and shadows) sheathed in black, many masked and faceless. They move - not dance - in and through darkness and light, the corporeal and the unsubstantial stalking each other, briefly uncoupling and inevitably reuniting, miming and preying on each other, sometimes a heartbeat out of sync.

Shadow play, almost, the lighting is dramatic and hard-edged or dreamily translucent, silhouettes and shadows fly slowly fluttering kites and all is well in the ordinary scheme of things between an individual and his alter ego – or good and evil, or dark and light – it is open to interpretation. There is ethereal, gauzy fabric, lots of it (sheer white which slowly turns to smoky black) – kites, flags and angel wings (that look like the Balinese umbul umbul) – billowing, rippling and afloat in wind produced by dozens of fans concealed in the wings.

The dancers perform their (sometimes) conflicting, (sometimes) playful duets with their shadows with the utmost economy of motion. It is almost as if the immobile is given life, they are weightlessly propelled by the invisible and the intangible - moving air and energy. Trained in Qi Gong, meditation, martial arts, modern dance, ballet and calligraphy, the dancers seem to exist outside their bodies, manipulating them with feather touch control. 

The malevolence of black slowly seeps in, the figures turn malefic and turn upon each other, movement becomes erratic and increasingly frenzied and the stage darkens, an oval disc of a mirror with an uneven surface is lowered and it reflects the amoeba-like dancers, seeking, crawling, confused and desperate; (distortions and further distortions) while the sound track changes from subliminal heartbeats and fetal whispers and chuckles to the throb of a dentist’s drill, explosions and gunfire.

A sudden waterfall of cascading black silk, endless and relentless, and dancers race around the stage with flags snapping, flapping, and shadows cower. Then begin staccato projections of Cai’s gunpowder drawings and explosions, echoing and reflecting off the flags, the backdrop, the walls and the dancers; the images perfectly focused on specific surfaces by crouching dancers wielding hand held projectors. 

The beatific and the tranquil is now subsumed by desolation and despair, bleak landscapes and the terror of approaching annihilation. The inevitable doomsday approaches in smoke and haze, light and sound, crazed and stunned beings; in a tempest of black clouds and black snowflakes that fall like malignant confetti, and it arrives magnificently in a breathtaking, engulfing, encompassing tunnel of green – a spectacular use of sulphur-lit smoke and projection to create a vortex that extends beyond the stage and into the theatre, sucking the audience into its terrible, hungry epicenter. 

And the black snow continues to fall as the lights dim and the curtains descend. 

Lin Hwai-min has won a slew of international awards including the Ramon Magsaysay Award. He was honored as one of Asia’s Heroes by TIME in 2005. Cai is famous for his use of gunpowder and pyrotechnics, and according to the programme notes, is a bold originator of new art forms whose basic material is gunpowder … his drawings and site-specific ‘explosion events’ demonstrate a spectacular fusion of the science and art of transformation … the processes of destruction and change as radical conditions for reality … and creativity. 

In a post performance discussion immediately after the show, Mr. Lin Hwai-min took questions from members of the audience with exquisitely polite, acerbic, wry, dry and sometimes impatient wit. He readily admitted that there was no story. The shadows were metaphorical, allegorical; the images without literary reference or context as words were limiting. If you have a plot and characters, movement is needed to convey the meaning of the story. I read things in energy and my dancers are freed from serving a character or a plot. They are just themselves, free to express through pure movements.

Though not intended as a political statement, Lin pointed out that today’s world is one of violence, unrest and conflict and everything has political inflections. Each person has to travel along his own path as a human being, and live as fully as his conscience instructs.

Wind Shadow - Behind the Scenes

Postscript: They were there near the Esplanade taxi stand, Lin’s faceless, nameless, impassive living sculptures, just a group of young men and women in Converse and cargo’s, bulging haversacks and mobile phones to their ears. I complimented them, and a couple of the boys replied with a gracious Thank You but I will remember the moment when a statue smiled, the stark contrast with that young girl who was centre stage through most of the performance, a smile of incredible beauty and acknowledgement.

* Photographs by Liu Chen-Hsiang.

* The stills in Behind the Scenes were taken by Anita on her iPhone when her camera packed up at the photo-op.

Visit Anita’s website www.singaporeforkids.com

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