Beijing Olympics torch relay
The rolling PR disaster that has been the global torch relay for the Beijing Olympics is in Australia at the moment for a run around the nation’s capital, Canberra. I had piece in the Canberra Times about it today.
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When the Beijing Olympic torch relay runs through Canberra, it does so as an overloaded symbolic event, preempted by global news reporting in which protests and counter-protests have dominated the relay’s image-making.
The purpose of the relay, as suggested by the ACT Torch Relay Planning Committee, is to “cheer on our Australian heroes”. This is a perhaps optimistic but not unreasonable attempt to wrest the meaning of the torch back for an Australian audience. Yet it only adds even more to the weight of meanings that have burdened the torch since it was lit.
The lighting occurred in Greece with an invented ceremony. Through references to classical Greek civilization, it invoked the performance of an immutable historical tradition while actually looking like something out of a Ray Harryhausen movie. … more …
雲門舞集 - 水月
An excerpt of a performance by the Cloud Gate dance company from Taiwan, founded in 1973 by Lin Hwai-min, of one of Lin’s most famous pieces, Moon Water. Video requires Quicktime 7.
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This week Cloud Gate are performing Moon Water in London at Sadler’s Wells. The whole work is set to Bach’s suites for solo cello and makes complex references to a number of movement styles, but especially tai chi and qi gong. At the end of the piece, the stage is flooded with water, which reflects the dancers’ bodies and movements. It’s amazing.
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