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AUDIENCE REVIEW: Kun-Yang Lin and Dancers's World Premiere of "Breath into Air"

Company:
Kun-Yang Lin and Dancers

Performance Date:
April 19-20 2024

Freeform Review:

The Kun-Yang Lin and Dancers brought a serious subject to the stage. A program that looked ominous, of our temporality and vulnerability, and the severity that losing something wills us to push onward. This was designed with original music by Cory Neale which showed great strength in capturing a jarring score. The philosophy and movements transcended upon us with a cinematic effect dedicated to this emotional response, which in short drew awe inspiringly, light-from-darkness.

From last year’s Home Season 2023, “KyLin’s Garden” which explored the mythical creature. We looked at the unicorn, and its meanings from different perspectives. Rather than indifferent belief systems, Kun-Yang observes the creative spirit that each dancer utilizes to exist in the world manifested on stage. For instance, a darker stage for grief, we really feel that life is reborn through gestures and shedding a layer of costume. And this shedding the layer of costume returned to light that did so in illuminating grief, or mourning in the World Premiere of Breath into Air.  Beginning this grief cycle with this 2024 version of, “Dragon” choreography by Weiwei Ma, arranged by the order of the program returned us to our elementary state, of stardust in an afterlife. The 2024 Home Season for KYL/D realigned beautifully with the space, and this view from above at FringeArts which heightened its overall effect of, "Dragon." I envisioned the dancers at first because of this higher vantage point very much like fossils. And in discussing the work with Wally, “amphibious creatures appearing on the beaches,” was imagined by Weiwei in creating the dance.

Through investigations into dance we discover stillness, moving-images, and figurative stories told through the visceral body. Distant memories and instances of consciousness bridge together through and through for a refreshed outlook on our postures and identities for our imaginations to exist. Like with a mythical creature, at least in a historical context, it can be difficult to imagine, and to explain the changes on stage, and the body presents this space. This tranquility weaved a sense of loss, in an innocuous World Premiere, “Breathe into Air,” rendered in its entirety was a piece in  evolution that connected the narrative with wearing our grief, in all black, and moving through a series of different emotional states in mourning a loss.

A duet choreographed by Evalina “Wally” Carbonell, “Koyl,” a sound reality in femininity. The collaboration between Wally and Weiwei in improvisation this time around struck a note of a ghostly presence. The duet passes by each time in rotation. We lose sight of either one’s traits in a blur. They create an angle into shaping individuals, and from their identical robes, a firm like manner of a turning portrait, a twisting like marble sculpture. An eternal loop, an elaborate rhythm, and an internal argument of simply, pacing in rhythm.

Closing the first half with a special excerpt from a 2011 piece, “The Mandala Project.” This section transformed as the solo embodied with sweeping motion in its costume, the mandala offering. A total framework, in that, dancers dressed in red tunic succeedingly, enter with one another in a line of flowing movement. In simulating the flowing fabric and, only sequentially, dancers in combination begin to resemble this different kind of "Koyil." It is cross referencing to the previous dance, "Koyl," but this meaning of a type of Hindu Temple is allusion for the purpose of imagery twisting, and intertwined with one another. In both cases, where one would meditate in relation to devotion, sacrifice, and worship put into purpose for the Mandala Project 2024. Leading us to the final piece in stages of grief for a series of enlightening, monsterous, and luminous effects: "Breath into Air."

Author:
Chuck Schultz

Website:
whyseeart.com

Photo Credit:
Chuck Schultz