2010-01-07
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation
Sponsors Moon Water by
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
at the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad
Committed to promoting Chinese culture through the arts on a global perspective, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation supports the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan to perform its classic work
Moon Water at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. The repertoire is scheduled to perform on February 5 & 6 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, Canada.
Robert Hung-Ngai Ho, Founder of the Foundation, says, “The Cultural Olympiad assembles renowned artists from around the world to present a series of contemporary works that transcend national boundaries.
Moon Water is acclaimed as the milestone of 20th century contemporary dance. Its cross-epochal creativity as well as its high-quality performances have won applause repeatedly in Europe and the United States. With Cloud Gate Dance Theatre performing at the Cultural Olympiad, the audience will have the opportunity to appreciate a paragon of harmonic integration of Chinese and Western arts and culture. The Foundation is delighted to support such a superb dance company performing in the Vancouver community “
Moon Water comes from the inspiration of the proverb: “Flowers reflected in a mirror and moon projected on water are essentially illusions”. Its choreographic movements are developed from the principles of
Tai Chi Tao Yin *. The dance is divided into eight parts in which dancers move fluidly to J.S. Bach’s
Six Suites for Solo Cello. The artistic conception of the
Moon Water stage is based on the dynamic interaction among
Tai Chi, the lucid mirror and flowing water.
The Cloud Gate Dance Theatre excels at articulating the notions of emptiness and existence with dance movements.
Moon Water explores even deeper into such ideas. Cloud Gate’s basic training embodies contemporary dance, ballet, Beijing opera movements,
Tai Chi Tao Yin exercises, meditation and martial arts. In
Moon Water, dancers take deep breaths and allow the energy from within to direct their body movements. Every movement depicts the state of being active and quiet, real and unreal, in the form of mutual promotion and restraint – a vivid showcase of the spirit and rhythm as aspired in Chinese calligraphy and painting.
Moon Water is the pinnacle of traditional Chinese movements transformed in contemporary style. It has been performed in numerous cities around the world, including Montreal of Canada in 2004. International dance critics marvel that this dance of oriental
Tai Chi has made perfect match with a classic piece of Western music. In unrivalled harmony with Bach’s
Six Suites for Solo Cello, it conveys a purified state of being. Ballet International praises that “the oriental
Tai Chi and Bach’s classics have waited for each other for two hundred years only for their encounter in
Moon Water.”
*
Tai Chi Tao Yin is a traditional Chinese breathing exercises practiced by Taoists to cultivate
Qi or internal energy of the body based upon the therapeutic principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Tai Chi Chuan is an internal Chinese martial art practiced as a form of
Qigong. The practice of
Tao Yin was an ancient precursor of
Qigong that involves harmonizing breath and body movements, massaging and concentrating one's mind to achieve better health and spiritual awareness.
About the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation
Founded in 2005, the
Robert H. N. Ho Foundation has deep roots in Chinese culture. Its mission is to foster and support Chinese arts and culture, in particular cross-cultural understanding between China and the world.
Since its inauguration, the Foundation has taken an active role in supporting arts and cultural programs around the world. In 2007 it backed
Britain Meets the World: 1714–1830, an international venture between the British Museum and the Palace Museum in Beijing. In early 2008, it partnered with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York to present
Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe, the museum’s first-ever solo retrospective on a contemporary Chinese artist. In the same year, the Foundation supported
Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty, the first-ever cooperative effort among the Asian Art Museum, the Palace Museum Beijing, the Shanghai Museum and the Nanjing Municipal Museum. The exhibition encouraged dialogue among the museums in China and the U.S.
Convinced that Buddhist philosophy can be an important path to personal and societal transformation, the Foundation supports programmes that provide a variety of platforms and tools to apply Buddhist insights to everyday life. It also initiates programmes that explore the relationship between Buddhist philosophy and the arts. In 2009, the Foundation presented in London
The Many Faces of Buddhism, an initiative to raise awareness of Buddhism in contemporary society and to advance the conversation about what role Buddhism can play in today’s world. A series of events draws on Buddhist views and practices to develop public programmes that creatively inspire audiences to live and interact with compassion. The series coincided with the opening of
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Gallery of Buddhist Sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Programmes included dance performances from four Buddhist traditions and cultures, a forum to explore connections between Buddhism and art, and a festival of Buddhist-themed films.
The Foundation is also collaborating with the Honolulu Academy of Arts in a multi-year project that aims to preserve, document and present the living Vajrayana Buddhist culture of Bhutan. A constituent exhibition, The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, began touring in early 2008 and will continue until 2010, embracing such destinations as New York, San Francisco, Paris, Cologne and Zurich.
In its home base, the Foundation focuses on arts education. It designs and operates three programmes, namely
Through Our Eyes,
Get It Write! and
Leap!, bringing a fresh approach to the arts to Hong Kong’s young people through photography, writing and movement. To learn more about the Foundation, please visit its website at
www.rhfamilyfoundation.org
~ 完 ~
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