Project Sau.te – Quarantine Project: Online, 11 – 22 May 2020

Plenty of room

Project Sau.te’s Quarantine Project – it’s Taiwanderful!

George Liang is a dancer with Northern Ballet and he’s come up with the marvellous idea of the Quarantine Project. He got in touch with some of his fellow-Taiwanese dancers and choregraphers (students and professionals) and they each agreed to perform a short, original live piece on the Facebook page of Project Sau.te (another of George’s ideas). So, each day at 12pm UK time, one dancer does their thing, the next day another dancer, and so on.

It started on Monday and what’s been particularly interesting is how the creativity levels have increased day by day. First up was Chia-Fen Yeh, a beautiful dancer who incorporated the doors of her room as supports and frameworks. By the time we got to Chien-Shu Liao from Company Wayne McGregor, he’d squashed himself into the kitchen and was employing all sorts of utensils and plants in his routine. Today’s short blast was from Rambert School’s Chih-Yuan Yang who chose to show his wares on his Taipei balcony with a strip light for company – just as a typhoon struck. It’s not often you get to see a dance solo accompanied by lightning and rain – who needs special effects when you have nature showing what she’s got?

(Above: Chia-Fen Yeh’s contribution to the Quarantine Project.)

The level of dancing so far has been extremely high, but then that’s to be expected – Taiwan has one of the world’s best dance education systems and a unique style that lends itself to grace and purpose. Each video has several inevitable minutes of faces staring at the screen waiting to be connected but once you get past that, there are spoken introductions in Mandarin and then, thoughtfully, English too. Once the video has gone live it’s then kept on the Facebook page so you can view them any time you like.

The Quarantine Project is a great idea, especially as you get to see a little bit of each dancer’s personality as well, and there’s still six more to go. To watch this daily unfurling of dance, and to catch-up with all the videos so far, try this link: https://www.facebook.com/projectsaute/videos/quarantine-project-6-chih-yuan-yang-%E6%A5%8A%E8%87%B4%E9%81%A0/526784961331130/?__so__=permalink&__rv__=related_videos

Gerard Davis