Rice dancer Chen Wei-an, photo by Liu Chen-Hsiang.
UCSB Arts & Lectures presents leading contemporary dance company Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan performing Rice, a multimedia work of human drama and the story of a revered land, on Tue., Feb. 2, at 8 p.m. at The Granada Theatre.
Renowned choreographer Lin Hwai-min, “the most important choreographer in Asia” (Berliner Morgenpost), created the visually stunning Rice in reverence of the land that has nurtured “Asia’s leading contemporary dance theatre” (The Times, U.K.). A work of devastation and resurrection, Rice is set to a backdrop of the living, breathing rice paddies that make up Taiwan’s expansive panorama; immersed in this landscape, Cloud Gate’s formidable dancers—described by The Globe and Mail as “One of the finest dance companies in the world”—enact a human drama parallel to rice’s life cycle: flooding, sprouting, harvesting and burning rice fields. On-site recordings of rustling grain, soughing wind and pealing thunder meet folk songs in Hakka—the oldest among the existing Chinese dialects—and operatic arias from the West to make up the soundscape.
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s Rice, photo by Gio To.
A cinematographer spent two years on location documenting the cultivation of rice, capturing images of clouds reflected in the water, rice swaying in the wind and ravaging fire to provide the production’s essential visual elements. With this awe-inspiring multimedia production, “Lin attains a sharply moving synthesis of man and nature, east and west, death and rebirth” (The Guardian, U.K.).
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.
For tickets and more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at 805/893-3535 or purchase online at ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.
—Leslie Dinaberg
Originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine on February 1, 2016.
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