Dance and Music: Diary of a Dancer

April 1991/The Troupe Reorganizes: Problems. Ko Li-mei, the troupe's artistic director, hasn't kept the books in order. Our sponsor, the Fred Shoe Corp., has taken back its funds and all the costumes. Our plans for an overseas tour and our NT$16,000 a month in salary have gone up in smoke, and only 16 of the 30 or so original members are left.

Wu Chin-fa and Tung Ching-mao, who write for the The Commons Daily, and some friends of ours in cultural circles, such as Wang Chia-hsiang, have formed a backup support group, trying to scrape up money for our costumes, transportation, meals and living expenses. Besides the practical financial support, it's nice to receive their concern and approbation.

We held a meeting today and talked about the troupe's future. Most of us feel that since we went to so much trouble quitting our regular jobs and studying dance for over half a year, we've got to show people what we've learned!

The 16 of us hail from seven of the nine aboriginal tribes, and most of us, except for the director, Su Ching-hsi, and the associate director, Ko Mei-ying, are less than 20 years old. We all had pretty good jobs to begin with. Nineteen-year-old Su-o, for instance, who comes from Chimei in Hualien County, originally had a government job with the township and had to buck the opposition of her whole family to join us. Ho-ping, an 18-year-old Ami from Taima village, used to be a fisherman and is very strong. Ah-chung, an Atayal, used to drive a truck. Now he's the troupe chauffeur as well as a dancer. Actually, we all joined the troupe simply because we love to dance and were interested in touring overseas--the salary couldn't compare with what we used to make at our original jobs.

Ko Mei-ying, a graduate of the Tainan Jr. College of Home Economics, used to perform at tourist spots, but she didn't like the way they did it, playing the old songs on modern instruments, wearing gaudy costumes and spicing up the steps--for an encore, they even had to drag the audience on stage to join in--so she came here, hoping to dance the dances that are part of our heritage the way they're supposed to be danced.

After an afternoon of discussion, plus the help of the support group, we all came away with a different way of thinking: We aren't working for anyone else any more--we're performing for ourselves. I think this has been a turning point, not a crisis.

June/Before Performing at 16 Cultural Centers Around the Province: People often ask us which tribe's dances are the hardest to learn. Strange to say, we've never had any specialized training, but we always pick up the dances right away. None of us is a member of the Tsou tribe, for instance, but we learned their dances in three days, relying on videotapes and the instruction of Wu Shan-sheng, a teacher from the tribe. Chen Chin-cheng, who's in charge of production, says it's because we have the rhythm of our ancestors in our blood, just like black people sing soul music better than anyone else. But learning the Tsou language wasn't easy at all. I saw Hsiu-chen's notebook, and it was full of markings in Chinese characters, the Chinese phonetic alphabet and Western romanization, plus curlicues to show where to vibrate the tongue.

There's going to be a tense final exam today. We have to perform in front of the elders of the Tsou tribe on Ali Mountain. Teacher Wu says that if we don't sing well, they'll just leave silently, meaning the songs we'll have sung aren't theirs.

We performed in the Tapang town-hall auditorium. After we finished, a tribal elder spoke up: "There should be two knots on the men's leg wrappings and not three." But another, with tears in his eyes, said, "I never knew our songs could be so beautiful!"

Having received the elders' praise and affirmation, we seem to have become a part of the tribe. Even though we were just rehearsing, we treated it as a solemn and dignified occasion.

August/Visiting a Tribal Village: We've been in Chimei the past few days, watching the harvest festival. Hu Tai-li, a member of the Institute of Ethnology in Academia Sinica, said it was a must. She was worried that if we kept on performing just to perform and the new members weren't put through a formal training process, our performances would soon wind up polished but empty.

We've had to watch a lot of activities on the side instead of joining in, but it's marvelous to see how the whole village throws itself in, even the youngsters.

Hsiu-chen, a Puyuma, says that her village is very sinified. She can't speak a word of Puyuma, and she has no experience of tribal activities. Even her grandfather speaks Mandarin to her. As an initial step, she's decided to ask her father to teach her some Puyuma when she goes home.

The biggest shock has been watching the way the adult male group dances. They look as though they were wrestling with the ocean, and we get a surge of adrenaline just watching them. Why is it we've never been able to dance like that?

Later, some of the young people in the village invited us to dance along with them before the formal ceremonial dance. Dancing hand in hand, the movements repeated over and over, we seemed to fuse into one. The new members were experiencing the excitement of a new realization, as the rhythms swept over our hearts like ocean waves.

Relying on videotapes and the teaching of local instructors isn't enough, it seems. The only way to obtain the true spirit of a rhythm is to receive it directly from the hands of those who created it.

Before we left for Iwan, Su-o, who's from Chimei, said she was thrilled--not only because many older people and teachers had encouraged her to stay on in the troupe but also because we were able to capture the spirit of their dances so well.

Late September/Only Seven Members Left: The supplemental funds we were supposed to receive from the Council for Cultural Planning and Development still haven't come through, and there's an uneasy sense of restlessness among the members--they're whispering together, as though they were talking about whether they should stay on or not. Who knows whether tomorrow someone else will leave? Or whether we can keep on performing?

Well, they've left after all. Su-o, Yu-lan, Ching-ting . . . ten of our partners are all of a sudden gone. Chen says we shouldn't try to stop them. They're all the chief breadwinners in their families, and we should thank them for having stuck with us for so long.

I remember when we were touring in June how we had to squeeze 45 costumes plus a month's luggage for 18 people--the 16 regular members, plus Ko Mei-ling's daughter and Chen Chin-cheng--into two nine-seater vans. The church we stayed in at night had only two bathrooms, so we had to take turns washing our clothes and taking a bath. By the time Chen groped his way through the dark to wash up, the clock already read three in the morning. It was tough, but no one complained.

But when we were going to perform at Mt. Fokuang in Kaohsiung the last time, we waited and waited for everyone at the time we'd agreed on, but only eight of us showed up. Nan-lu, who's got something of a temper, was so angry he blurted out, "If they can forget about performing because of an outside job, why should I stick around?" and took off in a huff.

The seven of us gritted our teeth, stepped on stage and went through our steps, as few as we were. Suddenly director Su began singing with all his might. The rest of us joined in and danced for all we were worth, but we couldn't help weeping in our hearts.

The next day, a miracle occurred. A group of aboriginal college students joined us from up north, including Sun Chin-mu, Kao Chin-hao and Lu Yu-hua from National Chengchi University, Chen Shihnin from National Taiwan Normal University and Yang Shih-en from the National Taipei College of Business.

Since they haven't gone through formal training and they haven't been to the tribal villages, they can't dance in the real spirit, of course. If there are any bystanders looking on during rehearsal, they're even embarrassed to take their shirts off. But they have a sense of mission, and they provide fresh reinforcements for gathering information and organizing materials. [Note: the supplement from the Council for Cultural Planning and Development came through in October, but half the troupe had already left by then.]

December/The Future Lies Ahead: We've all been busy the past few weeks helping the students get into the swing of things. Things have been busy, but the atmosphere has been steady and calm. If you figure it out, by January 1992 we'll have performed 64 times in all. Whether encouragements or setbacks, we often see them before us in our mind's eye.

During the first half of the year, we plan to study the music and dances of the Saisiyat and Puyuma tribes. Ms. Hu will provide us with the fruits of her years of research and the personal contacts she has built up. We really owe her a lot of thanks for volunteering to help us like this.

Ms. Hu says she's happy her research won't just lie on the shelf, that we can made it real and bring it to life.

No one can be sure what the future will bring, but we naturally don't want the troupe to break up. Besides our own personal pain, it's not likely another aboriginal dance troupe would come along for a long time.

Ko Mei-ling says she hopes she can preserve a little more of her cultural heritage for her children. Even if the troupe can't continue to perform, as long as it has three or four of members, we can still cooperate with the academic world and visit the tribes to study and collect information. We can change our methods. The Formosan Aboriginal Dance Troupe won't disappear.

Late December/Good News: Good news! Good news! The National Endowment for Culture and Arts has officially allocated NT$2.81 million in funds to us for study and field research next year.

We're going to perform in Ilan tomorrow, but I'm so excited I can't sleep. The sky seems brighter already.

[Picture Caption]

The college students who just joined the troupe aren't very keen about going shirtless in front of onlookers. Here they rehearse in a practice room at the President Hotel.

"You've got to get out to the tribal villages," troupe consultant Hu Tai-li, a researcher in the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, reminds them. (photo by Vincent Chang)

The Formosa Aboriginal Dance Troupe, made up of young people from seven of the island's nine tribes, has taken on the work of studying, recording and collecting information on aboriginal dance as well as performing it.

After a visit to the tribe, the troupe floats through the Ami dances of Chimei village with naturalness and ease. (photo by VincentChang)

Stop by stop, the troupe presented more than 60 performances in different locations around the island in a year.

"You've got to get out to the tribal villages," troupe consultant Hu Tai-li, a researcher in the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, reminds them. （photo by Vincent Chang）

The Formosa Aboriginal Dance Troupe, made up of young people from seven of the island's nine tribes, has taken on the work of studying, recording and collecting information on aboriginal dance as well as performing it.

After a visit to the tribe, the troupe floats through the Ami dances of Chimei village with naturalness and ease. （photo by VincentChang）

Stop by stop, the troupe presented more than 60 performances in different locations around the island in a year.