This article was published by Anthroehampton Blog:
As a PhD student who studies a dance troupe, I have been obsessed by an essential question – what can be left when everything in the world will become the past? The Taipei Dance Circle (the TDC) founded by Shaw-Lu Liu in 1984 is the only baby-oiled dance troupe in the world. This special material has not only changed the relationship between the floor and dancers’ bodies, but has also developed new kinaesthesia and alternative aesthetics, together with a process of professional socialization. After the late choreographer Shaw-Lu Liu died in 2014, the members still released new performances every year. Due to the fact that baby-oiled dance is such a rare genre in modern dance, they would like to continue developing and experimenting with this material.
The ultimate goal for choreography is to break through the existing dance – Shaw-Lu Liu
From the standpoint of the dancers, choreographers or anyone who works in the theatre, everything only exists in the present. A performance is born and dies on the same day. Whatever the past was, the present is the most important. To a certain extent, this viewpoint also reflects our living status in the world. We can only live in the present, neither in the past nor in the future. However, time is the enemy of everything. We are aging. Things are changing. The future will become the past. When we situate ourselves in the flux of time, what is valuable for us?
Some books are like the keys to the past that can help us to open a world and to find the gems in the ashes of time. Dancing Path: Shaw-Lu Liu’s Ways and Methods in Dance《舞道：劉紹爐的舞蹈路徑與方法》(1999), written by Ming-Te Chung in Chinese Mandarin, is one such book. Ming-Te Chung was the long-term art consultant in the TDC and Shaw-Lu Liu’s good friend. He witnessed how the baby-oiled dance developed, from its initial inspiration to many subsequent performances, and he left his invaluable observations in this book. Although Dancing Path is out of print, the materials in this book provide an important archive that enriches my understanding of the relationship between the past and the present.
Shaw-Lu Liu developed a series of warm-up activities, including body awareness, breathing meditation and moving, in order to reach to a status of combining ‘chi, body and mind’. The status is similar to what the English theatre director Peter Brook called 'the living pregnant void', a state which heightens creativity. Dancers felt alive so that they were capable of rehearsing a previous performance or improvising a new piece; they could do anything very well. By developing this training manual, Shaw-Lu Liu never choreographed, but let dancers improvise and collaborate with him. Through this method, the movements were original and transcended dance itself.
In my fieldwork in the TDC, I experienced many surprising moments during their rehearsals, improvisation, and simply talking with dancers. The baby-oiled floor provides a special surface that transforms dancers’ perception and technique in time and space. Once a dancer told me about her feeling of turning on the slippery floor:
Is it possible to dance forever like the Earth’s rotating? This is life. Keep turning…every moment is different. He was looking for this kind of elements. You start turning and be aware of your weight. You know you cannot lose your balance, so you have to adjust. Gradually, you control yourself and start seeing the world. When you feel dizzy, you start talking to your body. Sometimes, you have a feeling so you sustain that movement; time expands. The other times, you want to rush so you skip through the movement quickly; time passes. All of these connect to your life experiences, in the present.
From these dancers, I think the most important heritage that Shaw-Lu Liu passed on to them is the experience of being in their bodies and becoming one with the world. Dance is not only dance. Dance is life.
References and further reading
Allain, Paul and Ziolkowski, Grzegorz, eds. (2014). Voices from Within. Grotowski's Polish Collaborators. Routledge Taylor and Francis, London, 170 pp.
Barba, Eugenio. (1999). Land of Ashes and Diamonds: My Appreticeship in Poland. Wales, UK: Black Mountain Press.
Chung, Ming-Te. (1999). Dancing path: Shaw-Lu Liu’s ways and methods in dance《舞道：劉紹爐的舞蹈路徑與方法》. 台北: 時報文化
Huang, Yin-Ying. (2001). 'In search of somatic sounds at Song of the Goat Studio in Poland - Shaw-Lu Liu's experience of Grotowskian training and his Sight and Sound and Sound repertoire', Journal of Aesthetic Education, no. 129, pp. 12-17. 〈到波蘭去, 在「山羊歌」工作坊中尋找來自身體的聲音〉, 《美育》第129期, 頁12-17
Schechner, Richard; La Bardonnie, Matilde; Jouanneau, Joel; Banu, Georges and Husemoller, Anna. (1986). 'Talking with Peter Brook', in The Drama Review Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1986): 54-71.
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