Moon Water: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan

“Moon Water is a dream of a show, one of the most ravishing things I’ve seen in a theatre, an experience of beauty” - The Daily Telegraph

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Taiwan’s first contemporary dance company, is renowned for delivering spellbinding, spiritual performances which confidently blend Eastern and Western styles. At the Festival Theatre, as part of a Dance Consortium tour, the company performs Artistic Director Lin Hwai Min’s entrancingly beautiful work Moon Water on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 April.

Moon Water features a stunning on-stage work of art created by water flooding the whole stage. The production is minimal and beautiful with simple circles of design and movement, identical white silk costumes for men and women, and a watery black set which opens up to a panoply of mirrors. Eventually the stage floor becomes a huge mirror reflecting not only dancing bodies but also the patterns of the white brush strokes of the set.

Set to movements from Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello, Moon Water is based on the eastern practice of Tai Chi which gives it a natural rhythm and a visible pulse from the energy of breathing which propel one action smoothly towards the next. The title Moon Water derives from the Buddhist proverb ’Flowers in a mirror and a moon on the water are both elusive’ and a description of the ideal state of a tai-chi practitioner ‘Energy flows as water, while the spirit shines as the moon’.

According to legend Cloud Gate is the name for the oldest known dance in China, a ritual which dates back some 5,000 years. In 1973 Lin Hwai Min adopted this classical name for the first contemporary dance company in any Chinese speaking community: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan.

“Breathtaking…deeply beautiful, makes you appreciate all the praise heaped on
Lin Hwai Min” - Sydney Morning Herald

Fri 25 & Sat 26 April, 8pm
Tickets: £10 – £20
Post-show Talk: Fri 25 April
Box Office: 0131 529 6000

Book online at Edinburgh Festival Theatre.