Bringing it home
Having lived and worked in Europe for years, Lin recently brought her Swan Song to Taiwan. A duet consisting of six unrelated scenes, the work depicts the different faces of love. Ambiguous, poignant, and layered, it earned rave reviews from critics and audiences both in Taiwan and abroad.
Swan Song is based on Belgian author Georges Rodenbach's 1892 novel Bruges-la-Morte, and tells the story of a widower who has come to Bruges to recover from his loss. In the city, he meets and falls desperately in love with a young dancer who looks exactly like his dead wife. Unfortunately, his obsession with the deceased's image leads to endless grief.
Lin uses her dance to depict a protagonist trapped by the past and denying reality. The work draws on numerous European cultural symbols, such as a falling rope that has been used to toll a death knell and a nunnery where wealthy widows congregate, but Lin says her focus was on voicing universal sentiments.
"The point isn't in the story itself," she explains. "What I'm really interested in is people's inability to let go, in the kind of idea so powerful that it makes someone seek endlessly, even beyond death."
The original story, which takes place around the churches and along the canals of 19th-century Bruges, is filled with swans. Swans cry out with all their strength when death draws nigh, in a way emblematic of both the purity of the work and of an immutable love.
"I've always thought that you can't know happiness unless you've experienced pain," says Lin. "In the piece, I try to help the audience grasp the significance of happiness through humor, irony and innuendo."
Lin excels at using metaphor to express nuanced emotions and states of mind, leading the German media to dub her the "Ang Lee of dance."
"I love Ang Lee's work," says Lin. "We both come from an Asian cultural background, but interpret extremely Western things in Western settings. Ultimately, however, what we're doing is telling people's stories."
(photo by Chuang Kung-ju)