Yu-Ju Lin
- Mar. 2022: She participated in NTCH’s “2057: Rehearsing Ways of Living” project and co-created Cadavre Exquis: After 35 Years with Hsiao-Tzu Tien.
- Apr. 2021: For “The Law of Beliefs” exhibition of Creative Expo Taiwan, she presented Portrait-Chief.
- Jun. 21-23. 2019: Her first group choreography TAIWAN MADE, commissioned by the National Theater & Concert Hall (Taipei) for 2019 Innovation Series, will premiere in June. This piece is created for a multi-discipline collective of five Taiwanese performers and intends to reexamine the relationship between the individual and social milieu.
- May 25-27. 2018: SPONGE performed in Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis and was well received by critics in Paris. The review website Un fauteuil pour l’Orchestre praised it as “captivating and hypnotic”.
- Mar. 16 2018: She brought her solo piece SPONGE to Le phénix, scène nationale de Valenciennes.
- Feb. 2018: Selected as the NTCH Artist in Residence (Taipei) 2018, she has collaborated with National Theater & Concert Hall as well as And Fun Lab to organize the non-visual creative workshop for disabled students.
Freelance choreographer, dancer and educator.
Born in 1981 in Hualien, Taiwan. Graduated from the Graduate Institute of Dance, Taipei National University of the Arts. Her choreography path started in 2010 when she was selected to exhibit in the Young Star New Vision project by NCAF.
Often taking off from personal experience and awareness she has accumulated at different phases of life, she incorporates environment, space and time in her dance creations, and searches for movement vocabulary that are relevant to now.
As a dancer, she has worked with various choreographers, theater directors, new-media artists and fashion designers, participating in many cross-disciplinary projects. For instance in 2011, in collaboration with LuxuryLogico, she has created a transdisciplinary project “=”. As an educator, in addition to teaching in schools for years, she is also very interested in arts education for the public. Since 2018, she has participated in the “And Fun Lab-non-visual creative workshop” which aims to share and inspire the general public as well as disabled people to partake artistic expressions.
She was selected as the NTCH Artist in Residence (Taipei) in 2018. Other artist residency experiences include Cité International des Arts (Paris) in 2014, and Treignac Projet in 2010.
In 2018, her Sponge was presented in Le Phénix, Scène Nationale Valenciennes and in Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (Paris). Dry to Wear, a video work was presented in Paris in 2015. Solo for Now-in the Movement was presented in Yokohama Dance Collection in 2013.
She has also collaborated with numerous choreographers, such as Hwai-Min Lin, Bulareyaung Pagarlava, Tsung-Lung Cheng, Huang Yi, Shu-Yi Chou, and Xavier Le Roy (France). Her broad performance experience ranges from dance, theater, to digital arts.
Her choreography pieces includes: Taiwan Made (2019), Sponge (2017), The Expression of the Cloven (2013), She Said (2011) and Amarcord (2010).
Taiwan Made
A myriad of colors. Someone added a stroke of paints. Another added more stokes. And so on. After more than one hundred years, these colors have become intricately intertwined. Some are bright and beautiful. Some are dim and obscure. Some original colors are barely recognizable. There are visible lines, but how these lines are formed is unclear. Inside it, everyone can have a place …more…
Sponge
I remember one teacher I had when I was a child often said “I hope you can learn like sponges, absorbing, then discharging what you absorb, absorbing again and discharging, continuously repeating the process⋯” After I grew up, I realized that, as an organism, a sponge animal does not have nervous, digestive, or circulatory systems. It needs sea water flowing through its body to be able to bring in nutrients and push out waste products. It is passive in its survival. Recently, I encountered something which I had yet to learn, but because I never learned it in the past, it was not easy for me until it happened. This March, I visited a very intimate friend and saw how Do-do, the newborn of their family, brings them long-forgotten laughter and spirit. I was moved by this soft impact which peacefully slid in after the chaos, and before the strength.
Occasionally, Do-do is also like the sponge, waiting standstill for osmosis and change to take place.
This is a transition from one thing to another, a story told from collapse to reconstruction represented via body language.
Premiere:
Jun 2, 2017 at the Experimental Theater. Commissioned by National Performing Arts Center – National Theater & Concert Hall, Taiwan
Touring:
2018 Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, France
2018 Cabaret de curiosité 2018_ le 16 mars 2018_Le phénix scène nationale Valenciennes, France
“The body is let loose, submitting to its environment. A sort of contemplative trance, Sponge is an invitation to stoicism.”
“Absolutely captivating and hypnotic…… you would have the intricate sensation of plunging into the limbo of an unknown world. A movement that, as Quignard explains in L’Origine de la danse, uses the body before the language… the body before the self… the body before the light. Thus, in a profound and sensitive interior landscape, she summons a number of corporal states, sometimes spectral or ghostly, sometimes close to a trance or an unspeakable presence.”
Amarcord
The late Italian director Fellini invented a word of his own-Amarcord-which means“I Remember”
I remember the beautiful past.
I will always carry it with me as a life companion, and share it with those who always have story to tell.
Premiere: Nov. 12, 2010 at Experimental Theater, Taipei, for the New Vision series, sponsored by National Culture and Arts Foundation.
Touring: Aug. 2017 at Dance Bridges Festival ,India