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Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Sadler's Wells Theatre, London

Beautiful - but pointlessly solemn

Nadine Meisner
Monday 03 June 2002 00:00 BST
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For its second visit, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan has brought us Moon Water, a show that all aspiring set designers should see. It is a crash course in how to be stunning with the simplest of means: an empty darkened space, a floor – its black surface streaked with frosty concentric crescents – and a few mirrors. The mirrors later multiply into a back wall that reflects the dancers, while water oozes on to the floor and threads the occasional gaps in the music with the sound of trickling. One source for the title is a Buddhist saying: "Flowers in a mirror and a moon on the water are both illusive."

The movement is based on t'ai chi, qi gong and martial arts, channelled into an unhurried, seamless continuum that orchestrates the whole body into elaborately bent shapes. These men and women could be moving through water, their torsos swaying like sea plants, their arms drifting like tendrils. They flex their knees, lowering and rising as if the ground were elastic. They balance on one leg, the other floating in angled extensions. They are both weighted and weightless.

The audience was entranced by such beauty, such an outlandish vision, such physical control. But what does it all add up to? A poetic rendering of Taoist philosophy, the programme notes tell us, examining the polar opposites of yin and yang, real and unreal, effort and effortlessness. Without that information, suspicion would have whispered that it was just an empty aesthetic exercise.

The undulating unison groups certainly catch the eye; the solos have a lengthy virtuosity which suggests they might also owe a debt to Martha Graham technique. This would make sense, as the company's two dozen members train in Western as well as Eastern dance. The choreographer and director Lin Hwai-min founded Cloud Gate, the first contemporary dance ensemble in a Chinese-speaking country, in 1973. Lin Hwai-min's agenda has been to ally traditional Asian culture to a Westernised perspective. It's not so surprising, therefore, that he should set Moon Water to a selection of Bach solo cello pieces. And there's no denying that the choreography, for all its oriental inflections, inhabits the music intimately. The cycles of movement may, in accordance with t'ai chi, obey the rise and fall of breath, but they are also perfect music visualisations, bringing before our eyes the swell and surge of the cello's bow.

But 70 minutes of this (without an interval) can seem slow and monotonous. The arrival of water near the close introduces a mildly different note as the dancers swish and lie down, their loose white trousers drenched. But by then I was squirming, weary of the earnest solemnity. This piece takes itself too seriously.

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