Retour en Avant / Past Forward Biennale de la Danse Lyon - France

Lee-chen LinThe history of Legend LinDance Theatre is very muchthe story of its artistic directorand choreographer Lee-chen Lin.A graduate of the Chinese CultureUniversity, Ms. Lin was born in Taiwan in1950. She first came to attention in the 1970sas a dance teacher and choreographer at theChang-an Woman’s High School, where herdance productions – some involving as many as1,000 performers – garnered national awards forfive consecutive years and had an enormous influenceon dance theatre production in Taiwan.But it was her choreography and performanceof Don’t Forget Your Umbrella (1978), herfirst solo production, that gained Lee-chen Linwidespread critical attention and earned her thereputation of being “an astonishing new talentin Taiwanese performance arts”. Her subsequentdance pieces and choreographic work on stageand screen only enhanced her reputation, sheretired from dance in order to devote herself toraising her family. But faced with the rapid anddramatic decline of Taiwan’s traditional culturalarts in the face of a growing invasion of Westerncultural forms, Lee-chen Lin felt compelled to returnto the stage as a choreographer and artisticdirector. So, in 1995 she founded the Legend LinDance Theatre with the aim of presenting largescaleperformance works that reflect the spiritand the culture of her native Taiwan. Inspired bylocal religious rituals and ceremonial rites celebratingthe rhythms of nature and our place init, the artistry of the Legend Lin Dance Theatreblends lush visual aesthetics with a brilliantlyoriginal and exquisitely languid choreographythat gives new meaning to the phrase “poetryin motion”.Mirrors of Life /1995, revived in 2006This piece was created in 1995, and revived in2006 in Taipei.In this performance, Lee-chen Lin pays tribute tothe earth as the sanctuary of the soul. Throughpropitiatory rites, the human soul is purified ofits ills and the mind feels free. A tribute to therituals, the religious and profane ceremonies ofTaiwan, but also to the theatre passed downfrom generation to generation, its melodiesrooted in a remote past, and its songs sung foraeons. It evokes the eternal human quest forawakening and self-consciousness.How can the past shape the future?Time is as a river, continuous and inseparable. Thepast, the present, and the future seems to be threedifferent concepts, however, if we narrow down every“present,” like from this year, today, this minute, thissecond, even to the moment in which a thought fliesaway, every “present” dies as the past, and it alsodecides how the future comes.Life is like a tree, nurtured from the earth. Some ofwhat happened to us goes with the wind, while somekept in our memory accumulates as layers of earth. Thedeeper and richer the soil is, the taller and stronger thetree can grow. Likewise, my creation comes from everymoment in my life, and the changing of time plays agreat role to the maturity of it.Lee-chen LinExtra info :French premiereThe company performed at the 2000Biennalewww.legend-lin.org.tw33