2024 TCAF: Dear John - Never Say Never

5.13 (一) 12:00 TPAC Member pre-sale

5.20 (一) 12:00 Tickets can be purchased

"You bring us a night of strangeness and auditory adventure. Very serious and mysterious. Science and art and history and love in a big, dark wonderland. "— The Barefoot Review

"This was a completely engaging and thoroughly enjoyable performance." —Broadway World

"Situated at the point where music, theatre, dance, and artistic installation all meet, Dear John is an exploratory and experimental piece of avant-gardism, presented essentially without conventional distance between performers and viewers, as a tribute to legendary musical figure John Cage." —Stage Whispers

Inspired by the renowned American composer John Cage, Lin Kuei-Ju, an artist and composer from M.O.V.E. Theatre, incorporates Cage's principles of mechanics, decomposition, and purity to produce the family-friendly rendition of Dear John - Never Say Never. Collaborating with artist and choreographer Tung I-Fen from M.O.V.E. Theatre, as well as tech artist Wang Zhong-Kun, skilled in kinetic installations and sound art, Lin has created a one-of-a-kind sound laboratory experience.

These three artists, each with rich artistic backgrounds, will craft an enchanting sound lab brimming with playful curiosity: dancers manipulating piano keys with cotton threads, sound bottles generating pitch variations through different water levels, rain sticks and mushroom lights weaving a whimsical space of sound and light. This imaginative process of sound creation initiates an unprecedented sensory adventure through touch, awareness, listening, and discovery.

Dear John made its debut in 2013 and was chosen as one of the top five works at the 12th Taishin Arts Awards in the same year. Since then, it has been invited to perform at various arts festivals worldwide, including the OzAsia Festival, Kuandu Arts Festival, New Trend Art Festival in China, and the Chinese Festival of Arts in Singapore, among others. The family-friendly version of Dear John premiered at the National Taichung Theater in 2022 and will return to Taipei this year. We welcome you to join us in the theater, where you can freely explore the stage, immerse yourself in the rich visual and auditory experiences, and “play” music alongside the performers. This unique immersive theater experience promises to create unforgettable memories for you and your children in Dear John - Never Say Never!
 

Performing Group

M.O.V.E. Theatre
As an artistic platform to explore the aesthetics of physical theatre through movement, observation, and experiment, M.O.V.E. Theatre was established by the artistic director/director Fu Hong Zheng in the winter of 2006. It gathered artists from various disciplines, including theatre, music and dance. The practice of “Total Theater” is its artistic vision. The sharing of creative ideas is elaborated and transformed into the mutual gaze between performers and audiences. Its works feature a poetic theatrical vocabulary to reveal and to explore the spiritual landscape of modern people, while its subjects cover literature, myth, history, society, and etc., including interdisciplinary experimental projects with contemporary artists. Since its establishment, M.O.V.E. Theatre has presented more than forty theatre works and has been invited to perform at many international venues, showing impressive creativity and artistic achievement.

More Info: movetheatre-tw.com
Facebook: M.O.V.E. Theatre 
Instagram: m.o.v.e.theatre


Artist Profile

Curating and Music Composition: Lin Kuei-ju
LIN Kuei-ju holds a bachelor’s degree in Composition from the Taipei National University of the Arts and a Ph.D. in Composition from University of California, San Diego. She is currently the music director of the M.O.V.E. Theater and an assistant professor in music at Shih-Chien University. As a composer, LIN enjoys working with acoustic and electroacoustic instruments, sound installations and interdisciplinary collaborations in both theater and dance.
 
Sound Installation: Wang Chung-kun
Born in 1982, Taiwan-based Wang Chung-Kun works across media art in the development of sound, sculpture, video, kinetic art and installation. He has created various forms of machinery that have consistently maintained an intriguing purity and peculiar sense of beauty. As viewers approach the work these machines operate on their own – making sound, switching on and off, exhaling, spinning or twinkling – each creation with its own variation of rhythm and multiple actions.
 
Choreography: Tung I-fen
Born in Tainan, Taiwan, Tung I-Fen is a choreographer, performer, educator and curator. Tung works in various contexts, including dance, theater, film, contemporary music and technical art, among others, while laying her artistic practices in the agency and intersections of humanity, society and nature. Tung has been an artist-inresidence at Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, Colorado College and George Washington University in the USA. From 2020, Tung started to curate the program and host several projects such as Dance Park platform for freelance dancers, Unboxing: Live Art Arena for freelance artists, performing art program for Nuit Blanche. Since 2006, her works have been presented in London and Paris, as well as in Spain, the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India. Tung also participated in several interdisciplinary productions, such as Dear John which won the performance of the 12th Taishin Arts Award. And also present several participatory performance works produced by Anarchy Dance Theatre since 2016. She is currently afull-time lecturer at the University of Taipei.