Wild Cursive – Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

If the British Library left me in need of some textual healing, luckily I did not have long to wait, for I was straight down to Saddlers Wells for the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan.

Wild Cursive is the last of a trilogy of works inspired by Chinese calligraphy and in particular the focused energy of the brushstrokes and the way that the calligraphers “dance” during writing. The programme tells how the dancers were asked to improvise by facing blown-up images of calligraphy, and how they absorbed the energy, or Chi, of the writer, and imitated the linear “route” of ink, full of lyrical flows and strong punctuations, with rich variations in energy.

For Wild Cursive, choreographic ideas were taken from Kuang Chao, “wild calligraphy,” considered the pinnacle in Chinese cursive aesthetics and which frees characters from any set form and exposes the spiritual state of the writer in its expressive abstraction.

Even writing this now, I am struck immediately with how much more interesting an approach this is to calligraphy and the act of writing and the spiritual value of text than anything in Sacred, which barely touched on these aspects.

On stage, large banners of rice paper drop down from above. The paper is richly textured. Ink is dripped onto the paper from hidden pipes above, and during the performance, the ink meanders down the paper. The lighting design plays with the effects; for example when back lit patterns embossed on the paper emerge which were otherwise hidden. Sometimes the lighting gives a golden mystical glow to the paper and the ink.





But it is the dancing that is the start of the show. What originally attracted me was the fact that much of the movement is derived from Tai Chi Tao Yin and Chi Kung. As I am now in my 6th month of Tai Chi practice, I was able to appreciate just how incredibly difficult the movements were, and how unbelievably graceful and fluid the dancing was. Generally the scenes comprised between one and three dancers performing a series of linked but subtly different movements. The articulation was astonishing – some dancers seemed able to move separately each toe and finger at the same time. A cartwheel was performed with such grace that the dancer appeared to float above the stage.

The sound design was also fantastic: as well as the deep breaths and occasional yelps from the dancers, the theatre was filled with ambient sounds - the hum of cicadas, gusts of wind, waves breaking on a pebbled beach, dripping water, rainfall, foghorns and temple bells. And the Japanese chap behind me sniffing profusely.

For the finale, the full company of about 20 crept onstage in a tightly packed seething mass, slowly separating out to fill the stage. The cumulative effect of their movements made my brain feel like it was being stretched, like rubber, gentle gaps opening up, solid melting into liquid, splitting and folding on itself.


As the dancers magically disintegrated, a powerful flow of ink down one of the rice paper banners generated three thick feathery fronds whilst a pool of black ink formed on the stage.

The curtain descended with a solitary dancer sinking lower and lower to the floor until finally defeated by the curtain.

Mesmerising, meditative, and utterly brilliant.