At Derida Dance Center we have the pleasure to welcome the Taiwanese choreographer Jeff Hsieh for his 10-days residence (31st January to 11th February).
Jeff Hsieh is a contemporary choreographer and an art director of the Taiwanese company for contemporary dance “Anarchy Dance Theatre”. He has a bachelor degree in Architecture and a master degree in Dance choreography. Using his architecture experience he creates a unique structure and a distinguishing way to fill the stage space. In 2010 Jeff has been invited by Singapore’s Frontier Danceland to collaborate with Low Mei Yoke, the art director of Esplande, on creating a new production and to create original choreography for Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (2012). Jeff Hsieh’s performances In Freedom (2015), Seventh Sense (2011) и Seventh Sense II (2012) are produced by the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan. Other performances by Jeff are Anarchy's Dream (2009), Anarchy (2008), Gray Mass (2006) and Falling Kiss (2006). Even his very first choreographies win prestigious awards in Taiwan.
“Anarchy Dance Theatre” was founded in 2010. You can see the word “anarchy” in everything he does so he was asked why he is so fascinated by this word. He says that anarchy gives an alternative to correct the already existing but problematic rule. “When a regimen is overtaken another is built. Anarchy is a dynamic concept and including it in our name I am trying to address the problematic in the power and the structure.” As a result we see Anarchy`s Dream (2009), Anarchy 1980 (2008), and Anarchy (2008). All these performances examine the power relations between the sexes; tenderness and intimacy are blended with deep confrontations, violence as for understanding the performance the human factor is the most important.
Anarchy uses contemporary dance to express the team’s concerns about nowadays life, relationships and life recreating through motion the complicated relations of todays’ social structures.
Anarchy Dance Theatre aims to create their own dance training which begins with body awareness and goes to exploring time, space, material world and personal sensitivity. The company breaks the traditional theatre “chains” constructing an entire new performativity space. The main elements in it are the dancers, the audience and the space itself. Anarchy is based on the author’s excellent methods for moderating relations among these elements, for creating their own dance dictionary, for which Jeff has the vision to explore expressionistic dance in our modernity.
Jeff Hsieh is part of the little group Taiwanese choreographers who focus their work on finding a new body definition. He is distinguished by the fact that he doesn’t rely on the body as an expressionistic instrument; instead he brings modern digital technologies in theatre to rediscover human body.
According to many dance critics Jeff’s extraordinary experience in architecture is exactly what contributes for the unique spatial perception of his artwork. His earlier performances are more about interpersonal than spatio-temporal relationships.
“I did not like using technology in theatre”-admits Jeff Hsief- “It looked too isolated and damaged to me. During my study I took part in a project that was focused on digitalizing dance movements; I was always questioning myself how is it possible to digitalize that. Indeed human “functions” as emotions and physical motion, act like analogical signals which vary with different circumstances. There are so many aspects of the human behavior that cannot be transformed into 1 and 0! However I did realize the potential a combination between dance and technology has.” Then the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan sponsored interdisciplinary projects and the Anarchy Dance Theatre’s manager convinced Jeff Hsieh to collaborate with the new studio for interactive media design “Ultra Combos” on a new performance. Altogether they make “Seventh Sense” and “Second Body” and both performances are rewarded in many dance and technological forums worldwide.
“Second body” is known to the Bulgarian audience from the “One Dance Week” (2016) festival. By multimedia a second technological body is created as a parallel to the alive one. The two bodies takes us to new, unknown until now, sense and context in which we can understand the physicality and the borders of a human.
During his residence at Derida Dance Center Jeff will examine options for his new performance which will be presented in 2019. He will make a one-week workshop for Dance Port Derida’s students.
You can see part of Jeff Hsieh and Anarchy Dance Theatre’s work here:
Seventh Sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQlDEPLHPyQ&t=204s
Second Body: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrZdKER3gdI&t=50s
The Residency program of Derida Dance Center is realised through the support of Sofia Municipality.
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