AAPPAC Conference Featured Performance: Shattered Moon by Dance Forum Taipei & Toru Shimazaki

Dance Forum Taipei moves with choreographer Toru Shimazaki in their fifth collaboration. Highly contagious and powerful, this is the Japanese choreographer’s response to the state of long-term isolation and anxiety during the Covid pandemic. 

Shattered Moon enacts the power of community, as the bodies on stage revive a sense of connection with each other in the barren landscape after the disintegration of the moon.

The professor of University of Roehampton and dance anthropologist Dr. Chi-fang Chao said Shimazaki’s creation “with the value of a choreography textbook”.   David Mead said in Seeing Dance, Shimazaki’s program is “full of interesting choreography and that really showed the dancers off to the full.”  Diane Baker from Taipei Times, said “the frequent collaboration between DFT and Shimazaki “showed just how good the company’s dancers are, at times surpassing the limits of the choreography.“  

Dance Forum Taipei
Dance Forum Taipei (DFT) is the representative of contemporary dance in Taiwan. Through engaging different choreographers, the Company acts as an open forum for these artists to come together to present and to study their ideas first hand. Led by Ping Heng as Founder and Artistic Director, the Company presents performances of commissioned and re-constructed choreographies from different artist of diverse styles, ranging from inventive abstract vignettes to fantastical full-length dance theatre works.
DFT has presented 91 productions collaborating with 58 choreographers and 186 designers since its inception in 1989. Starting in 2008, the Company develops co-production with international companies and production house, including NDT, Skånes Dansteater, Korzo Theater and Mercat de les Flors. It has toured close to 1,000 performances, throughout the island of Taiwan as well as 40 major cities in Asia, Europe and North America. 
DFT received Taipei Culture Award for her “comprehensive perspective that cares about the depth and breadth of performing arts has created unique and indispensable cultural value.”  


Choreographer│Toru Shimazaki, Japan
In 1986 he moved to Austria and danced as a soloist at the Tirol Landestheatre in Innsbruck. The Sitter School of Dance in Canada invited to be the director of the Ballet department in 1990 launching his career as a choreographer. Shimazaki has created works for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Polish Dance Theatre, Colorado Ballet, Grand Theatre de Geneve, Introdans and many other companies through the world. He is now casting partner for Cirque du Soleil, Dean of School of Music and chief professor of the dance department at the Kobe College.