MeimageDance：My Dear

Ho Hsiao Mei / MeimageDance

My Dear

In My Dear, choreography flows through the silhouette cutouts by paper-cutting artist Jam Wu. On the origamilike stage, 8 dancers dash through the fleeting shadows, creating scenes of clashes and intimacy like flipping through pages of life. A classic of MeimageDance’s critically acclaimed repertoire, the revival amplifies this choreographic reflection on interpersonal affection and attachment with an enhanced stage structure and a new ensemble.

Winner of the 19th National Award for Arts, Ho Hsiao Mei explores in this piece the tension between individual agency and its subjugation to manipulation through experimenting with marionette-like shapes and combination of the dancer’ bodies. Marionettes possess an ideal form of the human body, yet they also point to the quality of being shaped and manipulated, a quality that human beings are also not exempt from.

In this new version, street dance techniques are integrated to create contrasting dynamics with the flow of the choreography. The dancers switch between doll-like figures with bleached white hair and manipulators wearing trench coats. Balancing on the page-like slopes, it is a portrait of the tug-of-war between interpersonal conflicts and connection.

MeimageDance

Founded in 2010 by the 19th National Award-winning choreographer and "creator of surreal imagination," He Xiaomei, MeimageDance reflects a unique style that blends dance and visual culture with a futuristic spirit. In addition to developing and creating He Xiaomei's personal dance visual style, MeimageDance has been promoting the "Button*New Choreographer" project annually since 2011. This program invites outstanding dancers and choreographers living abroad, to gradually prepare them to return home to Taiwan, to create and perform annually, and to exchange international experience, nurturing independent choreographers with professional experience and character through this cross-cultural training. From 2016 onwards, MeimageDance has been holding "Professional Dancer Workshops," providing professional body training courses to support and give feedback to Taiwan's free dancers. They also focus on exploring different possibilities for dance to have social influence and power, planning courses for learning disabilities and rural areas, and producing Video Dance series, expanding the social contact and influence of dance.