Witness pure joy from an aesthetic collision of movement and music, by choreographers Idan Cohen (Israel), Akiko Kitamura (Japan) and HORSE Dance Theatre 骉马剧场 (Taiwan).
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About the Artist
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Idan Cohen (Israel)
Choreographer
Idan Cohen was born and raised in Israel and danced with the world known Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (KCDC) founded by the late Yehudit Arnon. Since 2005 he has been creating, performing and teaching successfully as an international awardwinning independent choreographer.
His prize-winning works include: A year in a fish life (2006) which received the second price at the No Ballet competition in Ludwigshafen, Germany. My sweet little fur (2007), which received the first Performing Prize at the Solo Tanz Theater Festival in Stuttgart, Germany, Half cup sesame seeds (2007), created for the Bulgaria’s Arabesque Dance Company, won the first prize and the encouraging Award for original interpretation of musical composition in the Margarita Arnaudova international modern dance competition in Sofia.
Cohen continues to tour his work internationally and receive invitations as Guest Artist and teacher worldwide.
Akiko Kitamura (Japan)
Choreographer
Akiko Kitamura is a choreographer, dancer, and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts, Shinshu University, Nagano. She studied ballet and street dance, and graduated from the Graduate School and Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University.
In 1994, Kitamura founded her own company, Leni-Basso, and in 1995-1996, went to Berlin on an overseas training scholarship awarded by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs.
In 2001 she was invited to the Bates Dance Festival in 2001 and created Finks, one of her best known works, performed more than 60 times worldwide. Ghostly Round (2005), choreographed for In Transit organised by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) is another of her signature works which has toured internationally.
In 2007 Blind Trip was created for the SKIN project which toured to 20 cities in the UK in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, Kitamura choreographed and performed in a video opera based on the film Kairo by Art Zoyd, a well-known French avant-garde rock group. Since 2010, she has been working on To Belong, in Indonesia and Japan as an independent artist.
Chen Wu-Kang (Taiwan)
Choreographer / Dancer
Chen Wu- Kang was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and started dancing at the age of 12. When he was 16, he was offered a place at the National Taiwan College of Arts and in 1999 won the Gold Medal at Taiwan’s Council of Cultural Affairs, Creative Dance Competition. After graduating, he received an award from Taiwan’s National Culture and Arts Foundation to study in New York. Mr. Chen joined Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech Company in 2001 where he became a soloist the following year. In 2005, he co-founded HORSE and created Who & Memories for the company. In 2007, he choreographed and performed in Velocity, which was awarded the Taishin Arts Award for 2007, and was invited to the Joyce Theater in New York the following year. HORSE has toured to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Singapore and Dusseldorf. Mr. Chen continues to perform with Eliot Feld’s Mandance Project in New York as well as serving as artistic director for HORSE in Taiwan.
Su Wei-Chia (Taiwan)
Choreographer / Dancer
Su Wei-Chia graduated from National Taiwan University of Arts. He co-founded Horse Dance Theatre in 2005, and has created numerous works for that company including: Stairs, Velocity, Bones, Growing Up, I, Successor and Two Men. In addition to working with Horse Dance Theatre, Wei-Chia has performed with Taipei Ballet, Kaohsiung City Ballet and the Taipei-based Century Contemporary Dance Company. He has twice been invited to choreograph at Taiwan’s Asian Young Choreographers Project. In 2009, Wei-Chia was invited to New York to perform with Ballet Tech in a new ballet by Eliot Feld called The Spaghetti Ballet. Mr. Feld has also choreographed two solos for Wei-Chia.
Lee Shih-Yang
Pianist / Composer / Music Improviser
Shih-Yang Lee (December 27, 1982) is certainly one of the greatest musical talents in Taiwan. He studied classical piano at age six. After more than twenty years of classical and conservatory training, he his interest in composition and improvisation grew. He is the founder and co-leader of the improvisation group Ka Dao Yin, having an unique instrumentation with piano, saxophone, guzheng (Chinese zither), and sheng (Chinese mouth organ). In 2012 Ka Dao Yin's first CD Four Characters has won the Taiwan Golden Indie Music Award for Best Jazz Album and Best Jazz Track.
Lee has played with the main bulk of Classical and Avantgarde musicians in Taiwan. He has performed with drummer legend Sabu Toyozumi from Japan, pioneer of European free jazz pianist Fred Van Hove from Belgium and many others including Gene Coleman, Erik R. Lund, Hans Fjellestad, Tobias Delius, Carlos Zingaro, Umezu Kazutoki, Chie Mukai, Nobunaga Ken, Audrey Chen, Hugues Vincent, Luo Chao-Yun, Li Zenghui and Lin Hui-Chun. Lee has also cooperated with poets, painters, theatre companies such as Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group, and contemporary dance groups like HORSE Dance Theatre.