Cloud Gate's Moon Water: Illusion vs. reality

Cloud Gate Dance Theater’s Moon Water, to the choreography of Lin Hwai-min, was a marvelous — or miraculous — marriage of old and new, of the ancient, mysterious East and the dynamic West, of the Orient (Tai-chi) and the Occident (ballet and modern dance), with Lin devising a wondrous dance vocabulary all his own.

The curtain went up showing a lone male figure garbed in a white, billowy costume, the standard wear for all performers. As he danced, arm movements, graceful or angular, predominated, while his body gyrated, whirled, rolled, contorted in what appeared to be borrowings from modern dance — on a stage floor with swathes of white suggestive of whirling waters.

Soon, another male figure entered, and still later, a woman dancer. All three moved with exceeding slowness, a manner that was demonstrated likewise by the rest of the ensemble which moved with total control, discipline, focus. Extraordinarily high leg extensions, leaps, and a lift in a pas de deux called to mind the balletic idiom.

Music was Bach’s six suites for solo cello (played by Mischa Maisky), the cello vibrations echoing silently in the inner vibration of human bodies leaping, gyrating, lying or rolling on the floor, the constant grouping or re-grouping in solos, twos, threes, etc. enthralling the audience and compelling interest.

Occasionally, the music would cease, with the ensuing silence — deafening and utterly tense and suspenseful — the dancers mesmerizing and hypnotizing viewers with their hauntingly surrealistic dance language. Only once, and very fleetingly, did they ran, exiting from the stage in a semi-circle. For the rest of the performance, time seemed to stand still.

The dancers’ fluid, limpid, flowing grace was sheer poetry in motion, hovering between illusion and reality. A rear mirror with swirling waves painted on it heightened the illusion of nymphs and sprites immersed in the waters. Finally, an awesomely huge mirror with a frothy seascape served as backdrop, the dancers’ reflected images creating a visual impression that was unique — breathtaking.

Eventually, water flowed onto the stage floor, the dancers in various prone positions getting soaked, a knee jerk from this or that dancer causing a brilliant splash.

Again, the closing scene hovered between illusion and reality as the dancers lay perfectly still on the water-filled stage — for what felt like eternity! Then, in an other-worldly time frame, each dancer agonizingly wove his way out until a lone female figure remained, the audience holding its collective breath until she finally vanished from view, the immense mirror conveying Moon Water in its essence.

To quote the poet Keats, “It was beautiful exceedingly.” In sum, the magnified, prolonged silences, the stillness of the air, the languorous, lambent grace of the dancers moving ethereally to Bach’s glorious music against a dream-like set and bewitching light effects — all these created an illusion which, superseding reality, induced the beholder to philosophize, to meditate, to dwell on the eternal verities as no other dance concert has done — and, most likely, will never do.

Moon Water was presented by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, the Taiwan Chamber of Commerce and the Ayala Group of Companies in cooperation with the CCP which provided the venue. Carmencita T. Abella, president of the RMAF, explained the raison d’etre of the presentation, saying: “The RMAF is marking its fiftieth year and Moon Water choreographer Lin is an RM awardee.”

Miriam College as Mecca

Miriam College president Dr. Patricia Licuanan plans to make Miriam Auditorium a cultural mecca for the Katipunan area and the larger community of Quezon City. Recently performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in the auditorium were the Metro Manila Community Orchestra and the UP Jazz Ensemble. On Sept. 27 at 6:30 p.m. virtuoso pianist Alma Labra Makk will render Gershwin’s Concerto in F.