Cloud Gate begins overseas tours to conclude 50th-anniversary celebrations

Taipei, Nov. 16 (CNA) The Cloud Gate Dance Theatre is embarking on tours across China and Europe, performing three shows in 10 cities to wrap up a busy year of the dance troupe's 50th-anniversary celebrations, it said in a statement released on Thursday.

The overseas tours began after the premiere run of Cloud Gate Artistic Director Cheng Tsung-lung's (鄭宗龍) new artificial intelligence (AI)-infused piece "Waves," which concluded in Kaohsiung on Nov. 5, the dance troupe said.

A group of 13 dancers arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday, preparing for the first three shows of Cheng's 2022 work "Send in a Cloud" which debuts in the city Friday at the Shanghai International Dance Center, according to the statement.

It will be Cheng's first China tour after he took over the artistic director post from Cloud Gate founder Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) in 2020, and the statement said the "colorful piece that brings strong visual impact" is unlike any of its past works.

After performing at the 22nd China Shanghai International Arts Festival, Cloud Gate will perform in Nanjing on Nov. 24-25, and Guangzhou on Dec. 1-2 before the final four shows are held from Dec. 7-10 at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing during the 2023 NCPA Dance Festival, the dance troupe said.

Another group of 13 Cloud Gate dancers, meanwhile, will depart for Europe on Sunday to perform "13 Tongues" at Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona, Spain on Nov. 23-26, according to the statement.

Cloud Gate will then travel to Sadler's Wells Theatre in London and perform for the first time overseas Cheng's 2019 piece "Lunar Halo," which is inspired by his observation of the phenomenon of a ring of light around the moon in Iceland, on Nov. 30-Dec. 2, according to the dance troupe.

The performance will also feature the original soundtrack "22° Lunar Halo," first released in 2019 and written specifically for the show by the Icelandic Band Sigur Rós.

Sadler's Wells Theatre Artistic Director and Co-Chief Executive Alistair Spalding said the Cloud Gate performance marks the 11th time he has invited the dance company to perform since his tenure commenced in 2004, according to the statement.

"In their own country, they (Cloud Gate) are much more than a dance company," Spalding told the Financial Times while the troupe was performing "13 Tongues" at the London venue in late February 2020, just as COVID-19 was beginning to spread around the world.

Cloud Gate dancers will perform "13 Tongues" at Teatros del Canal in Marid, Spain on Dec. 6-7, and will then perform it for the 100th time during the Festival de Danse Cannes in France, according to the statement.

Didier Deschamps, artistic director of the French dance festival said he is looking forward to seeing Cloud Gate's "13 Tongues" being performed in Cannes and for the audience to experience the strong yet subtle emotions of the 2016 piece that is inspired by Cheng's childhood memories of the bustling streets and religious rituals in Bangka, a part of the old town in Taipei's Wanhua District, the statement said.

Cloud Gate will also stage "Lunar Halo" at the Theater im Pfalzbau in the German city of Ludwigshafen on Dec. 15-16 and "13 Tongues" at the Auditorio de Tenerife in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain on Dec. 20-21 to conclude the tour, the dance troupe said.

The dance troupe began this year's celebrations by staging Lin's 1978 classic "Legacy" in a six-city tour in Taiwan from April to June, followed by its annual free open-air "13 Tongues" shows in July, which attracted around 20,000 people in Taipei alone, according to Cloud Gate.

Cheng worked with Japanese new media artist Daito Manabe, who used generative AI to create the music and images for "Waves," which helped spark ideas for the choreography of the piece which premiered in Taipei on Oct. 12.

The current tours will mark Cloud Gate's first performances in China since 2019 and in Europe since early 2020.

Information on ticket sales is available on the dance troupe's website, it said.