Dancers find exhilaration in feeling 'blue'

Photo by Gia To/ For China Daily

"When I was young, I lived in streets rich with religious atmosphere. I was fascinated by the street-dancing rituals, the hand gestures, the facial expression of those gods crafted by folk artists," says Cheng.

"But the dance is not to perform or portray the gods. I just try to sort out my childhood memories through the dance."

Born into a poor family in Taipei, Cheng helped his family to earn a living by selling sandals on streets in his youth. He even joined the local gangs for a while. All of that early experience has been a rich resource for his creativity.

After earning his degree from Taipei National University of Arts, he danced with the Henry Yu Dance Group and Taipei City Ballet. In 2002, he joined the original Cloud Gate. His talent impressed artistic director Lin Hwai-min, so Lin invited him to be the resident guest choreographer for Cloud Gate 2. Subsequently, his pieces were shown in New York, London, Brisbane, Ludwigshafen and Taipei.

Huang's works usually combine dance, photography, installation and other arts forms. His piece Light integrates tango into contemporary dance with impressive light changing.

Huang grew up in his parents' dance studio in Taiwan, where he was always around teachers of tango and other Latino dances. Huang himself also studied photography, installation and other arts, and now he creates dances merging technology and machinery with body movements.

He has twice won the Taipei Digital Art Performance Award. In 2011, Huang was selected as one of "25 to watch" by the US publication Dance Magazine.

chenjie@chinadaily.com.cn

If you go

7:30 pm, Oct 22-24. National Center for the Performing Arts, west of Tian'anmen Square, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6655-0000.