In cooperation with New York-based Japan Society, Taipei Cultural Centre in New York will be presenting "Dance diaries" - a series of short videos and an online roundtable discussion between Taiwanese contemporary dance choreographers Hao Cheng (鄭皓) and Su Wei-chia (蘇威嘉) and Japanese butoh artists Kentaro Kujirai and Barabbas Okuyama – as the culmination of a seven-month Contemporary Dance Choreographers' Virtual Exchange between Japan and Taiwan.
These four emerging choreographers, originally slated to perform in Japan Society's biennial "Contemporary Dance Festival: Japan + East Asia," which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, have come together via this virtual artist exchange to explore new avenues of dance-making without sharing a physical space.
Since September 2020, the choreographers and their respective dance company members met once a month virtually to conduct joint workshops. To offer audiences an inside look, short video diaries filmed in each of these monthly artist workshops will be available for viewing starting on Apr. 21. A pre-recorded online roundtable discussion will premiere on Apr. 28.
Chang Hui-chun (張惠君), director of Taipei Cultural Center in New York, believes that through this program of in-depth sharing and exchange, Taiwanese and Japanese artists was able to learn from each other, and gain valuable results. She added that, this online workshop program is definitely a new model for international online exchange in our time.
Artistic director of Japan Society, Yoko Shioya, shared that in these virtual sessions, the four artists had to exchange through a flat-screen environment, and so they had to rely on 'language' to convey their concepts—yet they don't even speak the same language, but they were rewarded for their efforts in the end.
Both online events will be streamed on Taipei Cultural Center in New York's Facebook page and Japan Society's website. The program is a free event with advance registration required.