Melting into water
Dennis Chang on Taiwan's Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and Sylvie Guillem
2 May 2008

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre at Sadler's Wells

Not many eyebrows, but a few, including mine, arched in March when a photo of Taiwan's Cloud Gate Dance Theatre was used to lead off a Times article on China Now - a year-long, UK-wide festival that celebrates all things Chinese leading up to and extending beyond the Beijing Olympics. Yes, the National Ballet of China's new Swan Lake and Raise the Red Lantern at Covent Garden this summer are mouth-watering prospects that deserve maximum trumpeting, but for China to claim Taiwan's only world-class cultural export as its own is either a cruel, underhanded gesture of colonisation on the part of China Now or an unfortunate PR faux pas that was lucky to have escaped an Olympic torch-style demonstration. I, for one, would have joined the march.

Despite the important political divide, Taiwan's premier contemporary dance company, founded by choreographer and artistic director Lin Hwai-Min in 1973, finds much inspiration in ancient Chinese philosophy, opera, martial arts, and meditation. Cloud Gate derives its unique look by filtering miscellaneous chinoiserie through Lin's formative Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham-tinted lenses. Whether it's Bamboo Dreams (Taoist rituals), Wild Cursive (brush calligraphy), or Moon Water (Tai Chi), Lin has successfully presented the most mystical and exotic elements of the Orient to Western audiences who have appreciated his 19-strong dancers' technical rigour and spiritual discipline. Their lower centre of gravity and supple upper body may be anathema to the ideal ballet physique, but in Lin's choreography, where much of the action takes place below the waistline, being short, quick and pliable is a distinct advantage.

This year, Cloud Gate is touring Moon Water around Britain. The programme preface reads: "To the Chinese, Moon Water, or 'shui yuei', is a metaphor of two things. One is a Buddhist proverb: 'Flowers in a mirror and moon on the water are both illusory.' The other describes the ideal state of Tai Chi practitioners: 'Energy flows as water, while the spirit shines as the moon." Under this poetic pretext unfolded eight exquisitely crafted tableaux. The dancers' white billowy trousers added to the meditative atmosphere, yet there was no mistaking the effort required for the largely static choreography. With feet anchored to the ground like roots of the most sturdy evergreen, the Taiwanese's sinewy bodies and branch-like arms wound, pushed, bended, folded and unfolded, sometimes with glacial tranquillity and purposelessness, and sometimes dangerously volatile, gathering up momentum until the tension burst in an explosive kung fu kick. Three quarters of the way through the 70-minute long work, streams of water imperceptibly seeped on to the stage from the back. The white brush strokes on the black floor transformed themselves into watery reflections of the said moon, with the wet white trousers of the dancers melting into the illusion.

What a shame, then, that isolated movements from Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello should be the soundtrack for this timeless contemplation. Bach's Allemandes, Sarabandes, and to a lesser extent his Preludes, are slow European courtly dances with clearly defined forms and harmonic progressions. They are the poignant heart of each Suite, but when taken out of context, they can sound unduly sentimental - especially when arbitrarily lined up one after the other. East-Meets-West works for Bamboo Dreams because Arvo Pärt's music has a similarly amorphous quality, which definitely does not apply to Bach. Should Lin have consulted a musical advisor before embarking on the experiment?

One mega-star ballerina who has no reservation about Lin's work is Sylvie Guillem, who commissioned a solo from him for her Sacred Monsters. This is one dancer who has the ideal ballet physique - slender, long-limbed and light as helium when she moves across the stage. She did look distinctively out of her comfort zone in Lin's earthy steps, but in Russell Maliphant's Solo, Two, and Push, which returned to the London Coliseum as part of the Sadler's Wells Spring Dances season, she was in her element. I have reviewed these works before and seeing them again served as a reminder, not so much on the sterling quality of the performance, the ingenuity of the choreography or Maliphant's atrocious choice of music, but of the utter uniqueness of Guillem's body.

Since she burst on the scene in the 1980s, there have been equally bendy ballerinas, chic ballerinas, dramatic ballerinas, difficult ballerinas - yet no one has quite managed the combination. When she flicks her leg past her ear in the Flamenco-inspired Solo, one gasps not at the height, the speed, the utter lack of effort, nor the complete stillness of the remainder of her body, but at that sense of teasing and daring in her eyes as she looks directly at us. Twenty years ago that bad-girl quality divided the critics and the audience. Now we celebrate her unerring audacity. She is, at the age of 43, continually overlooked by the Royal Ballet (is there a glimmer of hope of seeing her in Mats Ek's Carmen in the new year?), but each performance is to be treasured.