Taiwan Today

The 2009 Asia-Pacific Traditional Arts Festival is slated to run from Oct. 3 to 11 in eastern Yilan County. Five performing groups with nearly 100 artists from Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam will offer a spectacular cultural feast highlighting the great diversity of culture, religion and lifestyles in the Indochinese peninsula. The five groups—Tre Viet Band (Vietnam), National School of Music and Dance (Laos), Srinakharinwirot University Traditional Dance Ensemble (Thailand), Mandalay Marionettes Theatre (Myanmar), and Sovanna Phum Art Association (Cambodia)—will appear at the Taiwan Traditional Arts theme park. Background to the performances can be gained from “Going with the Flow: Life and Beliefs in the Mekong River,” a special exhibition already underway at TTA’s Exhibition Hall, running till Dec. 20. Known as the Danube of the East, the Mekong River flows through the five featured countries and has enriched not only the land but also the unique cultures of the area. Additional insights are available through free lectures, symposia and music workshops, with artists from the participating troupes, all in Taipei, beginning in September. The selection of Southeast Asian artists to appear was made by a delegation of local university scholars which traveled to Indochina in search of truly representative groups. These exciting performing companies have been brought together in the festival by the Preparatory Office of the National Headquarters of Taiwan Traditional Arts under the Cabinet-level Council for Cultural Affairs. The TTA’s goal is to provide venues for local performing groups and handicraft masters, and to serve as a cultural exchange platform for visiting foreign groups, according to Henry H.T. Tso, deputy director of the preparatory office. The Asia-Pacific festival promotes the public’s understanding and appreciation of the cultural diversity in the region. The festival has been a major annual event since 2000, attracting thousands of people to Yilan in northeastern Taiwan, only a 50-minute drive from Taipei. Due to budget constraints, Tso explained, in the last two years the TTA could only focus on a single nation—Indonesia in 2007 and the Philippines in 2008. “Despite the financial hardships, we received a great deal of help from the Taipei office of the Philippine’s Department of Tourism, which was very pleased with the outcome, when more than 50,000 visitors swarmed in to watch performances during the 10-day event last year,” he said. Artists performing at TTA have been very satisfied with the facilities and accommodations, Tso noted. Many of them have expressed their willingness to come again. The ensembles performing at the festival this year embody characteristic music, dance and drama styles of their countries. The Tre Viet Band is an internationally renowned performer of traditional music, composed of five professional musicians active in Ho Chi Minh City. Each band member is a master of a variety of traditional instruments and musical styles. Their repertoire ranges from puppetry accompaniments to all manner of bamboo and string instruments, encompassing the entire country and different ethnic groups. The musicians and dancers from the National School of Music and Dance in Vientiane coming to Taiwan for the festival are all full-time professors at the school, which is dedicated to preserving and disseminating traditional Lao art. They will perform Lao folk dances and music played on unique Lao instruments, as well as improvised love song duets. Audiences will feel the majesty and solemnity of traditional Thai palace arts through the great variety of instruments and the beauty of the costumes of the 30 musicians and dancers of the dance ensemble from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Srinakharinwirot University. The Mandalay Marionettes Theatre presents Myanmar puppet dramas accompanied by drums and gongs, with both puppets and actors taking part in their unique and intoxicating performances. The Sovanna Phum Art Association, a traditional Cambodian folk art troupe, has toured the world since 1997 staging an assortment of shadow puppet shows, improvised singing, string music and classical and folk dances. The shadow shows and royal dances have been included in UNESCO’s “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” Most troupe members are professors or graduates of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. In addition to performances, there will be demonstrations of traditional crafts, including Lao musical instruments and paper lanterns, Cambodian shadow puppets and Myanmar drums. Coinciding with the festival, visitors can also watch “Peach Blossom Maiden Battles Zhou Gong,” a traditional Taiwanese opera, twice a day at TTA’s Wenchang Temple from Oct. 3 to 11. “We started out by bringing top-notch performers from neighboring countries because of geographical proximity,” Tso said. “Nonetheless, we are working on the possibility of broadening the horizons of our people, and hope to invite performing groups from European countries in the near future, perhaps as soon as next year.” That is surely something people in Taiwan can look forward to. For details regarding the performances and other activities, please visit http://www.ncfta.gov.tw. (THN) Write to Lishan Chang at lishan@mail.gio.gov.tw