Looking abroad for memories of home
Though Liu has unlimited hopes toward creative work, it can also be very exhausting. "It is my custom to 'keep chipping away'." When doing "Sacrifice of Snow," she even went so far as to hang a noose and used her own neck to see how Dou'er must have felt when she hanged herself. When her husband Chi Pei-lin saw this, he was very distressed, and encouraged Liu to put aside her choreography and go abroad for a while.
In 1981, at the age of 54, Liu took a hiatus from the dance troupe; she headed to London University's Laban Centre for Movement and Dance to begin pursuing her doctorate. She concentrated on the study of Chinese ritual dance, exploring the social structure and thought of the past through the movements and spatial arrangements of ancient dance. She drew on three works she had previously collected--"Greatness Over the Four Seas," "The World Completely Reformed," and "The Emperor Destroys the Formations." She did her dissertation under Cambridge University professor L.E.R. Picken, a scholar of Tang dynasty music who transcribed "The Emperor Destroys the Formations" into modern staff notation. Thus teacher and student were able to work together to fully reconstruct this dance. Liu earned her degree at the age of 62, becoming Taiwan's first doctor of dance.
To trace the origins of Chinese dance, Liu had to go abroad several times to find materials. Did she feel a sense of sadness over having to go to foreign lands to recover customs long lost at home?
"I felt some sense of sadness, yes. Just look, it took an English person to transcribe Tang dynasty music into standard staff notation," she says. "Yet," she continues, "I think that the Tang dynasty is now a cultural asset for all humanity. Indeed, the Tang itself absorbed a great deal of foreign culture, and much music and dance of that period came from Central Asia, becoming a part of Chinese dance. It all depends on how open, tolerant, and broad- minded one is."
Given the recent favor bestowed in Taiwan on things "native," the music and dance of Taiwan's aboriginal peoples have been staged as an art form, and groups of indigenous people have formed aboriginal dance troupes. Using anthropological methodology, they have studied and recorded the disappearing songs and steps of every indigenous community.
Back when Liu went single-handedly into aboriginal communities in search of their dances and ceremonies, she was commissioned by the Department of Civil Affairs of the Taiwan Provincial Government to gather young people from the nine major aboriginal groups together to learn each other's music and dance. Besides introducing the various songs and steps, Liu also added a few innovations of her own. "For example, originally the Bunun had no dance per se. But I noticed that when they drank wine, they would squat down and rock gently, so I expanded this movement into a dance," she relates, adding with a laugh: "I see that people are still performing it today!"
Also, in 1994, Liu drew on indigenous peoples' music and dance to create a work entitled "The Silent Sound of the Pestle." The piece is social criticism, depicting the current condition of the aboriginal people under the assault of modern civilization.
Yet, even though Liu was one of the first to research "native" dance culture in Taiwan, she says, "We should absorb any culture that is good, so that it becomes part of our own. It's not enough to look only at one's native soil. Moreover, if that becomes a slogan, that would by no means be good for the next generation."
Tireless retirement
In 1988 Liu was named the director of the National Theater and National Concert Hall, causing her to take a break from creative work. In her time there, besides holding ballet and opera workshops to develop the next generation of talent, she also allowed the two halls to put on productions of their own (as opposed to just allowing private groups to use the venues).
Since retiring, Liu has kept right on going. If she hasn't been doing choreography for the Neo-Classic Dance Company, then she's had her head buried in the books.
Each time Liu begins creating, her students moan, "Ms. Liu, you are going to lock yourself away again." Despite having more than 100 pieces to her credit, she rarely re-uses any dance movements, and each time an old work is performed again she changes the choreography and is unwilling just to do it the same as the original.
Was she satisfied by this performance of "Tsao Pi and Chen Mi"? Naturally not. "If I staged it again, I think I would cut out everything. The only two scenes I would keep are the single soldier on stage when the curtain rises, and that feeling of profound loneliness of Tsao Chih alone at the end." Having closed the show successfully, Liu smiled graciously, but her words are in earnest.
"Ms. Liu has been tirelessly teaching, creating, experimenting, researching, and writing. It's a force that even she herself can't resist that keeps her doing artistic work non-stop," says Chang Li-chu. For Liu herself, her four-decade passion for creation is more than just an interest, and more even than a mission. "The biggest motivation is to keep challenging myself."
Black Hole
After the curtain came down on "Tsao Pi and Chen Mi," Liu went right to work on project #110. Expected to be staged in November, it has the very timely and hip name of "Black Hole." Her inspiration came from the book A Brief History of Time by the renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
"When I was getting my PhD at Cambridge, I often saw a man in a wheelchair in the garden where Newton is said to have sat under the legendary apple tree. It was only later that I found out it was Hawking!" In A Brief History of Time, Hawking introduces the origins of the universe and the phenomenon of black holes. In her piece, Liu explores the relationship between action and attraction. Currently she has a stack of astrophysics texts on her desk to begin research.
Several years ago Liu and a group of students set themselves the task of producing a dictionary of dance. Today more than 10,000 entries have been completed, and the work has been turned over to the National Institute for Compilation and Translation for publication. Two years ago she established the "Neo-Classical Performing Arts Foundation." She plans to reproduce a number of precious Tang dynasty materials and works of her own in choreographic notation, with the goal of releasing books and videotapes sometime in the future.
Having chatted to this point, suddenly Liu softly but seriously says, "Most of my works have been tragedies, so next year I plan to produce a piece based on a children's story, to do something a little more light-hearted." Her eyes light up when she smiles.
That's Liu Feng-shueh. Even as we are basking in the memories of her last creation, she has already put it behind her and begun thinking about the next.
If there were no Liu Feng-shueh, what would be different about Chinese modern dance? "My generation was just at the juncture of tradition and modernity, and we thought more about where we had been and where we were going," she says. Then, with a smile, she suggests, "If I didn't do it, someone else would have."
Really?