From 1997 to 2020, NCAF announced winners across 21 editions of the National Award for Arts to "award outstanding art professionals with superb artistic achievements and continuous creative output or performances". A total of 111 artists with excellent accomplishments and ongoing creative careers in the fields of literature, music, dance, theater, visual arts, film, and architecture have been selected. Among them, the dance category has produced 11 winners, including Feng-Shueh Liu (1997), Shao-Lu Liu (1998), Heng Ping (1999), Man-Fei Lo (2000), Hwai-Min Lin (2002), Ching-Chun Lee (2004), Lee-Chen Lin (2005), Ching-Ru Lin (2006), Fang-Yi Sheu (2007), Hsiao-Mei Ho (2016), Shu-Fen Yao (2018), and Ming-Shen Ku (2020). The years 2008-2014 even saw 7 consecutive years without a winner in the field of dance, reflecting the unwavering principles and high standards of the National Award for Arts.

 

When the award recipients were announced in 2019, the winner Ming-Shen Ku told the media that the National Award for Arts was "given by society, so I feel a greater social responsibility". In addition to their outstanding artistic achievements, most of the winners of the National Award for Arts' dance category have felt that "dance serves to nurture". Through research, experimentation, building platforms, and founding dance companies, they have "nurtured" the fertile ground of dance in Taiwan for generations.

 

In terms of research, Feng-Shueh Liu, recipient in the first edition of the National Award for Arts in 1997, was the first to obtain a Ph.D. in dance in Taiwan. She founded Neo-Classic Dance Company in 1976. In addition to the 129 pieces she has created, her academic research is wide ranging and extensive. She has devoted herself to the collation, research, and reconstruction of Confucian dances and Tang Dynasty music and dance pieces. In recent years, the Neo-Classic Performing Arts Foundation, which she founded, has continued to compile Feng-Shueh Liu's creations and the dance scores reconstructed by her, including Cao Pi and Lady Zhen, Styrax Scent, Music for the Upturned Cup, and The Rite of Spring, among others.

 

In terms of experimentation, the latest winner of 2020, Ming-Shen Ku, was the first to introduce contact improvisation to Asia. Her perspective on the body and application of techniques have changed the vocabulary and style of contemporary Taiwanese choreography and established Taiwan's position as a major player in contact improvisation in Asia. Ku & Dancers, the dance troupe she founded, continues to hold jam sessions with its members, maintaining a long-standing collaborative and intimate relationship, as well as breaking the one-way hierarchy of dancers submitting to the authority of the choreographer. This special nature of the troupe means that its members span three generations: the old, the middle-aged, and the young, a testament to the claim that improvised dance transcends age.

 

In terms of building platforms, the 2016 winner, Hsiao-Mei Ho, has implemented the New Choreographer project with her dance company Meimage Dance, which continues to provide a platform for outstanding dancers living abroad to return to their homeland to perform and promote the exchange of dance ecosystems both inside and outside of Taiwan. Similarly, Shu-Fen Yao, 2018 winner, also launched the Mobilizing Cities exchange platform through the Century Contemporary Dance Company she founded. Since 2011, she has been working with creators from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Malaysia to plan small-scale art festivals through the exchange of dancers or design teams, which are staged in different cities of the collaborative network.

 

In terms of dance troupe foundation, in addition to the aforementioned Neo-Classic Dance Company founded by Feng-Shueh Liu, Ku & Dancers founded by Ming-Shen Ku, Century Contemporary Dance Company founded by Shu-Fen Yao, and Meimage Dance founded by Hsiao-Mei Ho, there are also Heng Ping's Dance Forum Taipei and Lee-Chen Lin's Legend Lin Dance Theatre. Moreover, Cloud Gate Dance Theater, founded by Hwai-Min Lin, is home to the largest number of National Award for Arts recipients, including Shao-Lu Liu, Man-Fei Lo, Ching-Chun Lee, and Fang-Yi Sheu. One of the founding members of Cloud Gate, Shao-Lu Liu, later established Taipei Dance Circle. These dance troupes, founded by National Award for Arts winners, have not only nurtured the most unique corporeality and aesthetics of Taiwan, but also shaped the landscape of Taiwanese art.

 

 

 

*Translator: Linguitronics