Almost 50 years ago, Tsai Jui-yueh, the mother of modern dance in Taiwan, based a dance on this poem by her husband. Off stage, Tsai is as courageous as the petrel in the poem. After her husband was exiled, she was imprisoned for two years. Upon release, she went on to raise her son by herself while going full steam pursuing her dance career. With her feminine vitality and deep love of dance, she has opened one new vista after another for dance in Taiwan.
At the end of January, the renowned Japanese dancer Ishii Midori came to Taiwan. In a hotel where a press conference was being held about the China Dance Academy's half-century of history, she embraced her old student Tsai Jui-yueh. The 85-year-old Ishii and the 77-year-old Tsai immediately started chattering away, overcome by a flood of memories.
"In my career in dance over several decades," Ishii said, "I was able to cultivate two diamonds: my daughter and Tsai Jui-yueh." After the press conference, the two gray-haired grandmas gave an impromptu dance, treading with light and nimble steps. It was as if they had gone back in time 60 years. . . .
Practicing under the desk
In 1921, a girl was born to a family of innkeepers in Tainan who already had two sons. They named her Jui-yueh. When the girl was four and five she would sing the Japanese children's song "Peach Boy" and dance to it unaccompanied at home. First she would act the part of the Peach Boy, the next moment she would be the monkey, and the next the chick. In elementary school she loved the dancing they did in gymnastics class. Every week on the day of her dance class, she would find it hard to concentrate on her other lessons, secretly practicing under her desk the dance steps she had learned the week before.
Little Jui-yueh went on to attend what is now the Tainan Girls' High School, where she grabbed every chance she could to dance. During her morning calisthenics class, she would put her all into stretching, extending her limbs like petrels spreading their wings. Her calisthenics teacher noticed her talent for dance, and began selecting her every year to participate in the dance performances at the school's anniversary celebration. As graduation approached, she began to gather brochures for Japanese dance schools, and grew determined to head across the sea to Japan to study dance.
Not only was dance not regarded as an art form in Taiwan back in those days, but it can safely be said that people had almost no appreciation of dance whatsoever. Her classmates thought she probably just wanted to join a famous Japanese song-and-dance revue. Her sister-in-law, who has known Tsai since childhood, was so unhappy at learning that Tsai was going to Japan to study dance that she blurted out, "Why would such a quiet and well-behaved young lady want to run off and become a dancing girl?"
The petrel flies away and returns
When Tsai Jui-yueh was just 16, with strong support from her physical education teacher, she left home in a fit of pique to teach in the countryside, and this show of resolve finally convinced her parents, who loved her very much. In Kaohsiung she bought a third-class boat ticket for Tokyo, then the center of dance in the Orient, and she entered Japan's most prestigious center for modern dance: Ishii Baku's Dance Academy.
Ishii Baku, Ishii Midori's father, enjoyed fame in Japan as "the father of Japanese modern dance." He was one of the first Japanese dancers to study ballet and modern Western dance. When World War II broke out and the major dance companies of Europe stopped operating, Ishii Midori and Ishii Baku left for Southeast Asia on a tour of Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. Tsai Jui-yueh, learning modern Western dance techniques and concepts all the while, went with them. The trip gave her invaluable performing experience but even more importantly expanded her dance horizons, allowing her to absorb the dance styles of various nations.
In 1945 the 50-year Japanese rule of Taiwan ended, and the next year the 25-year-old Tsai Jui-yueh got onto a boat to keep the promise she had made when leaving Taiwan: She would return to broaden the vistas for dance in her homeland.
On that boat full of Taiwanese students returning from Japan, the gentle breeze brought memories of home. Every day just after 5:00 am Tsai Jui-yueh would go up on deck, welcoming the sea's breeze as she practiced dancing. Some of the college students called her crazy, but others who loved music and dance would help her, keeping a beat and finding musical scores. A group of them even joined her performing. Taking "We Love Our Taiwan" by the Taiwanese composer Tsai Pei-huo as their theme, they used dance to convey the pastoral scenery of their homeland and to express the emotions of students far from home. This high-spirited group of young people longed to return to their homeland and embark on a new spring.
When literature meets dance
The ship docked at Keelung, and then Tsai returned immediately to her own home of Tainan. There she started Taiwan's first dance school, the Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Art Academy, where, wearing Taiwan's first pair of ballet slippers, she performed "A New Parasol," the scene of the dying swan from "Swan Lake," and, to the powerful beat of drums and cymbals, "Construction Dance," a modern work that expressed the solidarity of the Taiwanese people and their hopes for rebuilding.
The style of life on the island hadn't changed in her absence. When Tsai Jui-yueh began to rehearse dances that had parts for both men and women, her students all tried to talk her out of it, and her brother even told her that if she was going to perform a dance with a man in public, she should be prepared never to marry. As it turned out, before they had even performed these dances, people were saying that this sort of dance was indecent, and her landlord took back the studio. Tsai Jui-yueh, a quiet and cultured native of the old city of Tainan, ignored these criticisms. Resolutely maintaining her position, she headed north to Taipei the next year, and in the City Hall put on "The First Exhibition of Tsai Jui-yueh's Creative Dance" accompanied by the official provincial orchestra. The performance was an eye-opener for the many who had never seen a dance performance before.
Fang Shu-hua, now in her sixties, was then a student at the Hsinchu Girls' High School. Back then dance was not a part of any curriculum, and there were no movies or books available about it. The performance at the City Hall was largely a musical concert. A dance performance was still something unusual. Quite by chance, she saw Tsai Jui-yueh dance, and immediately fell under dance's spell. She became Tsai's first student in Taipei, spending her weekends at Tsai's house.
Marriage
In working with the orchestra, Tsai made the acquaintance of Lei Shih-yu, who sat on its board of directors. This Cantonese poet and painter from Taishan had studied in Japan, where he had a book of his Japanese poems published and where he had established a poetry society with Hsun Tzu-hao and Chi Hsien. After the retrocession of Taiwan to China, Lei was one of the first Chinese artists and intellectuals to come to Taiwan, where he got a job at Taiwan University as a professor of literature.
This man who could speak Chinese and Japanese fluently and had already achieved a measure of fame was nonetheless happily willing to translate for Tsai (who was not yet fluent in Mandarin), and he would often take her on his bicycle to meet other cultural figures or reporters. Tsai felt that she was relying more and more on Lei, and after the performances in Taipei were over and she was preparing to go to Taichung for performances there, her heart sank knowing that Lei wasn't going with her.
On the day before she left for Taichung, Lei, who was dropping Tsai off in front of the alley where her older brother lived, took his old watch off his wrist and proposed to her. These two talented lovers of art would marry just three months after meeting. For Tsai, her personal life and career in dance were blooming at the same time.
Winter comes
After marrying, Tsai choreographed one new dance after another, and was still dancing when she was eight months pregnant. The audience, moreover, couldn't tell she was pregnant at all. It was only natural that her son would become a dancer himself. The same year her son Lei Ta-peng was born, Tsai, taking the theme of Taiwan's aboriginal people, choreographed a major dance, "Remembering Old Shuishe."
Tsai Jui-yueh's sister-in-law Lu Hsi-chin recalls that when they were making preparations for the performance, the NT dollar plummeted, and stores put away their better fabrics. Tsai left the drapers' shops and burst into tears on the street. Eventually, her sister-in-law pieced together the costumes for "Remembering Old Shuishe" from Tsai's dowry cloth and cheap, rough material.
Yet this happy period of poetry and dance and a child's laughter was frustratingly short. The night before the family of three was to board a ship (for which they had already bought tickets) and go to Hong Kong, where Tsai was to teach dance, someone came to say that the president of National Taiwan University wanted to see Lei, and he left, never to return.
After the anxious Tsai Jui-yueh made inquiries, she learned that Lei had been imprisoned in Keelung for his political views. Every day Tsai, with babe Ta-peng in arms, went to Keelung to visit Lei in jail. After four or five days, she began to worry that the trip with all its transfers was too exhausting for the child, so she went to Keelung by herself. On that day, Lei Shih-yu was being put on a boat to leave Taiwan. At first Tsai Jui-yueh pushed forward to join her husband, but then she realized that Ta-peng wasn't with her, so she stopped in her tracks and silently watched her husband be sent off into exile.
Never-ending wind and rain
Originally Tsai thought that she would wait for her husband to go to Guangzhou, where he would contact her. She wanted to say good-bye to her parents and planned a farewell performance before going abroad to look for her husband. Only when she went to handle the paperwork did she realize how serious the situation was and that she might never see him again. In that period, she would often walk along the road crying. It was just fortunate that she, as a woman in a still very traditional society, had dance, for it gave her financial and spiritual support.
Her bad luck, however, wasn't over, and a month after her husband was deported, Tsai was herself imprisoned for two years. But even in jail, Tsai-soft on the outside, tough on the inside-would stretch her muscles leaning against the pillars of the prison, keeping herself limber. She would even teach dance to her fellow inmates. Her daughter-in-law says, "Every time I meet with obstacles, I think of the adversity that my mother-in-law has suffered through, while persevering with her dance all the while. And from this I am able to grasp why artists have always been so respected-it's like they're saying 'you can imprison my body, but you will never be able to shackle my spirit.'"
After getting out of jail, the first thing Tsai Jui-yueh did was to head for her oldest brother's house in Tainan to see Ta-peng. And that evening, because of Tsai Jui-yueh, her brother was arrested. "With one member of my family being arrested after another, if I just put a little downward pressure on my legs, my knees would start shaking," Tsai recalls.
For the next several years, Tsai Jui-yueh was under the watchful eye of the local police. She had to report to them every month and file a description of her activities. When there were opportunities to perform overseas, her works and students could go, but she couldn't.
"As far as we were concerned, Taiwan back then was like a big concentration camp; it wasn't free at all," says Lei Ta-peng, whose mother was imprisoned when he was one year old, and who remembers the many taboos of his childhood.
The leaves dance in the wind
After getting out of jail, Tsai changed the name of her dance school to the China Dance Academy, and moved it to its present location in an alley off Chungshan North Road in Taipei. There she trained such contemporary masters as Yu Hao-shan, Tsao Chin-ling, Tsai Kuang-tai, Hsiao Ching-wen, Li Wei and Tsu Jung-jung. All would start on their careers in dance by opening that red door.
Hu Yu-sheng, chairman of the board of Philharmonic Radio Taipei, was in one of Tsai's children's dance classes and would end up studying dance with her for 17 or 18 years. "I really enjoyed studying with Ms. Tsai; it was just like playing games. She would tell us kids to each pretend we were a leaf and that she was the wind, and when the wind started blowing, we would spontaneously start dancing and rolling and stretching our bodies."
A house of art
The China Dance Academy, which seems so small today, was then Taiwan's largest dance school. At its peak it had 300 students and eight branch schools in locations all across the island. Tsai would often take trains between branch schools so as to teach at each, and she would sleep on the trains or in the stations.
When foreign dancers came to perform in Taiwan, they often visited the China Dance Academy. Famous Japanese, Korean and American dancers all came by. Local artists also liked to gather here: the master photographer Lang Ching-shan and the painters Yang San-lang and Yen Shui-lung have left Tsai with many precious photographs and drawings. In those days the dance academy was like a little island of artistic idealism. And here young people could partake in the joys of creation.
With art as inspired as her life, Tsai has re-choreographed dozens of standard dance works and created dozens of her own as well. Back in the days when there was limited access to information, Tsai would sometimes base a dance on the still photos of dances performed by foreign companies, and would at other times choreograph entirely based on her feel for the story. Once, in preparing to perform the scene of the dying swan in Swan Lake her students watched a movie of Margot Fonteyn performing The Firebird 100 times, memorizing nearly every move she made. Such classic ballets as Swan Lake, Giselle and Romeo and Juliet were all first put on stage in Taiwan by Tsai.
In the 1950s, the government promoted performances of folk dances. Always one to grab opportunities to get in front of an audience, Tsai would perform many famous folk dances. Once, Li Han-ching told Tsai that Miao minority dancers in the hometown of his classmate Yao Hao performed a sort of tap dance using cups. When Tsai heard this, she was greatly interested, and got Yao Hao to hum the music and asked the orchestra at the Broadcasting Corporation of China to make a recording based on it. The now-familiar tune "A Miao Girl Taps Cups" was so created.
In order to collect materials about traditional Chinese dance, she studied the use of colored ribbons, long sleeves and swordplay in Chinese opera with Su Sheng-shih and Ha Yuan-chang. Tsai developed sword dances, shield dances, and feather dances based on the inspiration she received from Chinese opera. "Our teacher could make good dance from any material," says Li Han-ching.
Leaving the land of heartbreak
In the 1970s dance departments began to be formed in colleges and schools, leaving the private academies that had been cultivating Taiwan's dancers for some 20 years out in the cold.
In that period, the musician Ma Sicong, a friend of Lei Shih-yu who suffered with him during the Cultural Revolution, left the mainland for a free life in America. Ma got in touch with Tsai and expressed interest in writing music for one of her dances.
For Tsai, nearing 60, this ballet based on the Qing dynasty work Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio was the high point of her creative life. But after Ma Sicong applied to a public agency for assistance, the original control that the China Academy had over the production kept getting reduced, and eventually, with the justification that "a private group isn't big enough to handle such a large-scale performance," control over the performance was given to a junior college dance department.
This further instance of government interfering with art left Tsai and her son thoroughly disappointed. In 1983, when Lei Ta-peng emigrated to Australia to join a modern dance group there, Tsai decided to go with him.
The political oppression of an earlier era had been a great burden for this mother and son, and her relatives all hoped that Tsai could live a care-free life there. Although her daughter-in-law Hsiao Wo-ting had only been married to Lei Ta-peng for a year, she nonetheless encouraged her husband to stay in Australia with his mother, while she stayed in Taipei to manage the China Dance Academy.
Tsai explains that her son lost his father when he was just a baby, and when her infant son needed his mother most, she was in jail. Hence, in the days since, she has practically not wanted to let him out of her sight.
Growing up, Lei Ta-peng knew his father's influence only through a few of his writings and a brown jacket originally belonging to his father that one of his father's friends gave him. In his day-to-day life, his mother had to be his father too, and he was very protective of her and resentful of her suitors. But when he got married, he thought of how his mother had been alone for a lifetime, and put his mother ahead of his wife. All three have at times in their lives had to sacrifice for others.
Reunion
Since emigrating to Australia, Tsai has also gone with her son and daughter-in-law to mainland China to see her husband, whom she hadn't seen for 40 years.
When the family was reunited at the Baoding train station, Lei and Tsai were already totally gray. "I feel as if in their lives there has been a huge gap placed between them, which is impossible to bridge," Hsiao says in recollection of the meeting. "At first, the two quietly stood there, and then Tsai embraced Lei, and everyone was at a loss for words."
It was just as awkward for everyone when they went back to Lei's home because Lei had remarried. Although there were surely complicated feelings on all sides, everyone did their best to get along. After being exiled from Taiwan, Lei had bones broken during the Cultural Revolution. "In this generation of Chinese," he says in frustration. "It has been impossible to please either side."
In Australia, Tsai opened a dance studio and taught dance to overseas Chinese. Then they moved to Brisbane, Australia's vacation center, and the mother and son have taken up painting. On ceramic plaques and oil paintings, Tsai depicts dancers in beautiful positions.
For most of her life, Tsai was busy teaching and performing and found herself in opposition to society. Today she likes to look back on every stage of her life. In her spare time, Tsai now takes out a tape recorder and notebook, and makes a record of her life. At sunset, she and Ta-peng take walks on the beach, where they dance as the sun sets. The petrel still longs to fly free!
Who is Tsai Jui-yueh?
Lei Ta-peng accompanies Tsai in her days in Australia, while his wife stays at the China Dance Academy on Chungshan North road with their two sons and keeps the business going. Because Tsai has been abroad for almost two decades and not many of her former students have become involved in teaching dance themselves, this place that cultivated so many dancers is being forgotten.
Four years ago, because of the construction of the mass transit system in Taipei, the China Dance Academy, for which they own the building but not the land, was faced with the threat of demolition. Hsiao Wo-ting called Tsai's students together to make a big stink about it in the cultural community, and they planned a demonstration "Out of Respect for Tsai Jui-yeuh." On the wall they pasted old photographs of Tsai and old programs of her dance performances, and hung precious old costumes and props. And Wei Tzu-yun, a playwright who was a good friend of Tsai and her husband, read with great feeling the poem that Lei Shih-yu had written for Tsai, "If I Was a Petrel." A half century of dance in Taiwan was there in that wooden building. But mostly members of the cultural community just expressed pity or nostalgia or an interest in keeping a piece of the dance floor as a souvenir.
To get them to display a resolve to preserve the China Dance Academy, Hsiao then organized a "high-energy" activity that would "challenge their endurance." On a blustery night in September 1994, as a typhoon approached Taiwan, virtually every performing arts group in Taiwan crowded onto the alley next to the Taipei Bank on Chungshan North Road, where the audience, wave after wave of them, showed an infectious enthusiasm. Inside the academy dancers were putting on 24 hours of non-stop impassioned dance performance. Meanwhile, Hsiao and two of her students spent the entire night on a crane about 15 stories high. The campaign finally obtained a promise from Taipei mayoral candidate Chen Shui-bian that he would save the academy if elected.
During the course of these activities, Tsai never returned to Taipei. Under the circumstances, if the city government wanted to tear down the old house that was so much a part of her accomplishments as a National Heritage Award winner, then she couldn't bring herself to return.
Forever a petrel
Eventually she came back. Last December, 20 of Tsai's former students gathered in the Grand Hotel to celebrate the birthday of their 77-year-old former teacher. Among these students were some from the early period who were nearly 70 themselves, and others from later on who were about 50. Fang Shu-hua, a grandmother still teaching dance, says that their parents gave them a happy childhood, their husbands provided for their happiness in middle age, but it was their teacher Tsai Jui-yueh who gave brightness and vitality to their youths.
The birthday celebrations started at noon and continued until dusk, when they trooped back to the old China Dance Academy. The wooden beams of the building have been nearly destroyed by termites, and whenever it rains, the water comes in through the roof, which is beyond repair. The students are used to practicing dance to music accompanied by the beat of water dripping into pails. Yet, it is also that kind of beautiful place where the air is infused with the emotions of the past. The mirror that hangs all the way to the floor has seen generation after generation of dancers stretch before it, and the floor has absorbed their sweat. When people enter the building they immediately relax; it gives them a sense of release that is hard to put into words.
Naturally, someone puts on music, and the white-haired students take off their shoes and start to dance spontaneously on this floor with its patched sections that have themselves been repatched. The singer Lin Chung, the liveliest student as always, holds his teacher as they dance together and adopt a pose that was on the program for the 1953 performance of "Moonlight Melody."
The truly brave
Hsiao Wo-ting, who has always quietly managed things away from the spotlight, is both one of Tsai Jui-yueh's students and also a member of her family. As a fellow dancer, she is deeply moved by her mother-in-law's life: "She is so bold, and has always been breaking new ground. Her courage wasn't something momentary, but has been a constant throughout her life. I want to make a record of her work. Her love for dance, and the brilliant light that glows from her whole life is truly a mirror of the modern era of dance."
In this little alley off Chungshan North Road where the academy sits crowded between high-rises, Tsai wrote the first page of the history of modern dance in Taiwan amid great life struggles. Hsiao, who shares Tsai's great love for dance, has taken on herself the burden of preserving this legacy.
These women of different generations have both shown remarkable perseverance for the sake of dance, putting into motion the beautiful song of the petrel.
p.44
Like a petrel gracefully spreading its wings, Tsai Jui-yueh created a space for modern dance in Taiwan.
p.46
The 77-year-old Tsai Jui-yueh and her former teacher, 85-year-old Ishii Midori, reminisce about their lives six decades ago.
Tsai at 16 (kneeling), posing with teacher Ishii Midori and family. (courtesy of Tsai Jui-yueh)
p.48
Living overseas now for many years, Tsai happily blew out her birthday candles when she attended a party thrown by her students on her return. Her son Ta-peng and daughter-in-law Hsiao Wo-ting are at her side.
(right) This precious photograph captures the happy life together that Tsai Jui-yueh and Lei Shih-yu enjoyed so briefly. It has prompted countless sighs and stories. (courtesy of Tsai Jui-yueh)
p.50
In an age when dance was just getting off the ground in Taiwan, the China Dance Academy was a must stop for foreign performing arts groups when they visited Taiwan. (courtesy of Fang Shu-hua)
p.51
From ethnic dance of all kinds, to modern ballet, to traditional Chinese dance- all were materials for Tsai to work creative wonders with. Tsai would lose herself in her performance of dance of any kind. (courtesy of Tsai Jui-yueh)
p.52
Students whose own hair is turning gray accompanied their teacher to visit the China Dance Academy. How much sweat of diligent dance students has soaked into this floor over the years? How much history of modern dance in Taiwan has it borne witness to?
(right) In an alley off of Chungshan North Road, behind this small wooden sign, lies the China Dance Academy, which artists have rallied to protect.
p.53
Returning to the China Dance Academy, the students began stretching and moving their bodies to the beat of the music, and Tsai danced with Lin Chung, a popular singer in the 1960s, who was always one of her cheekiest students.
p.54
In Australia, Tsai finds pleasure in painting ceramic art. For themes, she still looks to the love of her life: dance.
p.55
After choreographing so many works, like the petrel cutting through wave after giant wave in Lei Shih-yu's poem, Tsai hopes now to reflect quietly upon the stories of a lifetime.
（right） This precious photograph captures the happy life together that Tsai Jui-yueh and Lei Shih-yu enjoyed so briefly. It has prompted countless sighs and stories. （courtesy of Tsai Jui-yueh）
In an age when dance was just getting off the ground in Taiwan, the China Dance Academy was a must stop for foreign performing arts groups when they visited Taiwan. （courtesy of Fang Shu-hua）
From ethnic dance of all kinds, to modern ballet, to traditional Chinese dance-- all were materials for Tsai to work creative wonders with. Tsai would lose herself in her performance of dance of any kind.
From ethnic dance of all kinds, to modern ballet, to traditional Chinese dance-- all were materials for Tsai to work creative wonders with. Tsai would lose herself in her performance of dance of any kind.
From ethnic dance of all kinds, to modern ballet, to traditional Chinese dance-- all were materials for Tsai to work creative wonders with. Tsai would lose herself in her performance of dance of any kind.
（right） In an alley off of Chungshan North Road, behind this small wooden sign, lies the China Dance Academy, which artists have rallied to protect.
Students whose own hair is turning gray accompanied their teacher to visit the China Dance Academy. How much sweat of diligent dance students has soaked into this floor over the years? How much history of modern dance in Taiwan has it borne witness to?
Returning to the China Dance Academy, the students began stretching and moving their bodies to the beat of the music. and Tsai danced with Lin Chung, a popular singer in the 1960s, who was always one of her cheekiest students.
In Australia, Tsai finds pleasure in painting ceramic art. For themes, she still looks to the love of her life: dance.
After choreographing so many works, like the petrel cutting through wave after giant wave in Lei Shih-yu's poem, Tsai hopes now to reflect quietly upon the stories of a lifetime.
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