《二十世紀舞蹈史在亞洲》編舞計劃

計畫陳述（artist statement）

Conceived, choreographed by River Lin, and interpreted by Wen-chung Lin, “20 Minutes for the 20th Century, but Asian” presents the 20 minutes performing the modern dance history of the 20th Century. It meanwhile tells the 20 minutes retrospecting the practice over the past 20 years of the dancer Wen-chung Lin, and the 20 minutes we share in the Taiwanese, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Southeast Asian, the European and the American.

With the approach of ‘performing dance archives’ and the notions of ready-made art, the form and title of this work parodies the artist Tino Seghal’s “20 Minutes for the 20 th Century” (2000), a collage of iconic choreographies, such as from George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch, Xavier Le Roy and Jérôme Bel. However, this “but Asian” is not meant to showcase a curation of Asian choreographers.

Through postcolonial eyes, this performance is tempted to review, in the Pan-Asia, the relationship between the development of modern dance, the westernization thereof and modernity. It questions the significance of the term Asia for the Asian and reveals the negotiated decoding of the corporeal and the subjective, multiculturally. Intertextually, Wen-chung Lin’s personal history will be examined, as what makes his body a dancer consists of Chinese folk dance, ballet and the Graham technique. After the seven-year experience of working with Bill T. Jones, he returned to Taiwan to establish his own dance company, exploring his dance lexicon.

In the 20 minutes, there will be a critical reflection where a dance performing the historical and simultaneously the present. The performative gesture is the spectacle of the other.

演出手記

幾年前當我開始在歐洲進行行為藝術的研究時，遇見了波赫士夏瑪茲與提諾賽格爾的作品。夏瑪茲的《二十世紀的二十個舞者》以及賽格爾的《二十世紀的二十分鐘》啟發我思考如何在亞洲脈絡談論舞蹈史。這個作品的發展過程是一種批判思考，要敘述亞洲的現代舞蹈史十分複雜，在概念、地理、政治上，亞洲未曾存在這項共識。呈現一個亞洲舞者通常如何學習西方的現代舞並賦體其技藝，成了這件作品的核心，它意欲喚起記憶、連動情感，並想像一種討論當代舞蹈的空間。

I discovered and explored the work of artists Boris Charmatz and Tino Sehgal few years ago when I started to spend time in Europe doing researches on live art and performance. Charmatz’s work 20 Dancers for the XX Century and Sehgal’s 20 Minutes for the 20th Century have inspired my thinking about how I can address the notions of dance history in the Asian context. The development of 20 Minutes for the 20th Century, but Asian has become a critical reflection. The narration of Asian modern dance history is conceptually and geographically complex without evident political consensus. How generally dancers in Asia learn from the western modern dance and embody its technic legacy is at the heart of this work. It aims to evoke memories, to associate emotions and to imagine a space for explorations of contemporary dance.