CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE CURSIVE II (2005)

Director: Ross MacGibbon

Year: 2005

Time: 66 mins

Music: John Cage

Eye of Sound: The second part in a trilogy recently concluded with Wild Cursive, Cursive II is an entrancing and meditative exercise on elegance and austerity. Inspired by Chinese calligraphy, this acclaimed piece by choreographer Lin Hwai-min offers an hypnotic lexicon of gestures that seem to draw both from Tai-Chi and martial arts, driven by an unshakeable desire to reach some sort of ecstatic nothingness. Movement is both fluid and tense, delicate and vigorous, slow-paced but charged with vibrant energy; and the visual composition is stunning, rarely abandoning asymmetry but always focused on scenical harmony. The selection of Cage's music for such a piece might seem odd for those less familiarized with his repertoire and theoretical apparatus. But the choice of such ethereal, mediative pieces as Ryonaji, Five or Sixty-Eight is more than appropriate as the guiding light for the dancers' mesmerizing gestures as it seems to draw the viewer closer and closer to the unreachable stasis that both the choreographer and the composer want to achieve.

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