While it is common in today's Taiwan to attend performances by artists from other parts of the world, that was not the case 30 years ago. At that time, Taiwan did not have a government agency like the Council for Cultural Affairs to promote such activities, nor did it have the National Theater and National Concert Hall, which together constitute the nation's most important performing arts center. Consequently, people had limited access to theater, dance and music performances, especially those by foreign troupes.
In 1978, composer Hsu Po-yun and his wife, flautist Fan Man-nong, set out to change all that. Together they founded the New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation, the first organization of its kind in Taiwan, with the goal of planning, producing and promoting art and cultural activities. It was a pioneering act in a conservative society that was under the rule of martial law, which was not lifted until 1987. The impact of the new foundation on Taiwan's performing arts world was so significant that renowned stage actor Chin Shih-chieh has described its establishment as "like a light shining in the darkness."
Hsu Po-yun began his career in the performing arts by learning to play the violin and studying music theory under renowned composer Hsu Tsang-houei. When he was 17 years old, the younger Hsu began to assist in planning and organizing musical performances. Now 64, he says the early experience taught him that Taiwan needed more professionals capable of promoting and administering the arts.
When Hsu Po-yun and Fan set up New Aspect, they did so to introduce "meaningful" artistic and cultural activities to Taiwan. Hsu, who was 34 years old when the organization was founded, explains that by "meaningful," they were looking for performing arts that exhibited "good sense, good meaning and good life." While Hsu is the visible face of New Aspect, Fan prefers to work in the background, following up with contacts and attending to administrative tasks.
The very first event organized by New Aspect came in September 1978 with a performance by Elloy Electronic Music Demonstration, a French performance troupe. Since then, the foundation has worked with artists from 101 countries; organized approximately 9,000 performances, including more than 100 world premier performances in Taiwan; and entertained more than 8 million audience members. Most of New Aspect's performances have been in the genres of theater, music and dance.
Although planning performances necessarily includes many administrative tasks, Hsu says he believes the work should nevertheless be done by those who have in-depth knowledge of the arts, so that the programs are assessed according to their artistic merits, not their commercial potential. "Hsu always considers first whether a program is good enough and is less concerned about whether the arrangement is workable or how many tickets can be sold," says Wu Jing-jyi, executive director of the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange.
Hsu purposely does not limit the scope of the type of performances his foundation promotes, insisting that they range from traditional to modern and from local to global. Nevertheless, with his background as a composer and art lover, he has demanding criteria for the performances he wants to introduce in Taiwan. He says that over the past three decades, his foundation's underlying goal has been to bring home various art forms from every corner of the world, especially the lesser-known South American, Indian, Arabic and African performing arts that many other agencies hesitate to promote. For instance, Indian sitar music and gamelan music from Indonesia made their debut performances in Taiwan via New Aspect's promotional efforts. "Whenever there is a performance coming out from those regions, it is our first priority to look into it," Hsu says.
New Aspect founders Hsu Po-yun, right, and wife Fan Man-nong (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Looking Overseas
In addition to enriching Taiwanese cultural life by introducing more genres of performing arts on the island, Hsu's foundation has also dedicated itself to presenting Taiwanese artists to international audiences. Many well-known local art troupes received their first opportunity to perform abroad through arrangements made by New Aspect, including Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and Lan Ling Theater Workshop's tour to the Philippines in 1983, Performance Workshop Theatre's visit to Singapore in 1990 and Contemporary Legend Theater's (CLT) performances in the United Kingdom in 1990. The foundation also launched Taiwan's first cultural dialogue with mainland China by arranging for mainland Chinese artist Fou Ts'ong to perform a piano recital in Taiwan in 1982, as well as bringing over the first group, a dance performance by the National Central Ballet of Beijing in 1992.
CLT co-founder and administrative director Lin Hsiu-wei recalls Hsu's enthusiasm after the troupe's first production, The Kingdom of Desire, premiered in Taipei in 1986. "Hsu and his wife immediately came to us and talked about the possibility of taking this show abroad," Lin says. Hsu put a great amount of effort into inviting performance agents from different countries to watch CLT's shows in Taiwan, and the payoff came when the troupe was invited to perform at London's Royal National Theatre in 1990. At the time, for such a young troupe to garner an invitation to perform internationally was fairly unusual, Lin says. To cover the troupe's travel expenses, Hsu and government officials from Taiwan had to rely on sponsorship from British entrepreneurs.
CLT's four successful performances in London gave the troupe invaluable exposure and helped to take The Kingdom of Desire to more than 10 other countries afterwards, Lin says. When asked how New Aspect is different from other arts promotion organizations, Lin says that "while many others only think about inviting the most popular shows and artists, Hsu cares more about how to educate the public by introducing them to different and new art forms."
Facing Challenges
New Aspect has faced more than its share of challenges over the years. For Hsu and Fan, organizing events in Taiwan and overseas requires numerous negotiations that demand great administrative skill, attention to detail and the ability to handle crisis. Hsu's aspiration to offer high quality performances and diverse performing arts to the public has made his work challenging, especially during the years Taiwan was under martial law. He says that he was summoned several times during the martial law era by Taiwan Garrison Command, a state security body operated by the military, to "talk" about whether the activity he was promoting pushed the bounds of decency. The issues that concerned the officials included such minutiae as the length of ballet dancers' skirts and whether the dancers should wear pantyhose on stage. Although finding sponsorship might seem like a daunting task to some, Hsu does not feel that soliciting funding from the government and businesses was ever a hardship. "I believe there is a benevolent side of each person and I just kept on going," he says.
One especially meaningful--albeit challenging--event for Hsu was the Prague Symphony Orchestra's performance in 1989, because the symphony was the first performance group to come to Taiwan from one of Eastern Europe's then communist states. Hsu says the Czech government wavered for months about giving approval for the orchestra to travel to Taiwan. After authorities finally approved the tour, Hsu was informed that reservations for the orchestra's return airline tickets had been cancelled. Determined to adhere to the original schedule for the event, Hsu stayed at his office day and night for a whole week, calling almost every domestic and international airline to secure enough return tickets for the troupe's more than 100 members. The effort was finally accomplished by dividing the group into three parts and sending each group home by a different route.
Such challenges along with financial pressures ensure that maintaining a long-term presence in the art world is never an easy task. Hsu recalls that Cloud Gate, the nation's best-known dance troupe, was forced to suspend operations in 1988 because of heavy financial burdens and did not resume performances until three years later. It is no secret that New Aspect has been in debt for most of its existence, but Hsu and Fan have never given up on their dream of promoting the arts in Taiwan. To this day, Hsu says he does not emphasize how much the foundation will benefit financially from a performance because the cultural benefits are more important.
Wang Jung-wen, chairman of the YLib Group, which is Taiwan's largest private publisher, says the investment, and hence risk, of publishing a book is about NT$400,000 (US$12,500), but the investment for holding a performance such as those promoted by New Aspect can be as high as NT$5 million (US$156,000). One reason the risk is much higher, he says, is because there is only a short period of time to make the event a success, while books can be sold over a much longer time frame. Wang praises Hsu and Fan's resilience in their long-term quest to offer quality performance opportunities. "Imagine how many adversities and risks they've had to cope with while putting on the 9,000 performances," he says.
The biggest financial blow for New Aspect came in 1997, when the foundation organized an event called the Super Concert at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall plaza. The concert featured the ensemble of Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Diana Ross and won a great response from the audience. Unfortunately, however, many members of that audience didn't pay a thing to listen to the concert. Organizers installed some 70,000 temporary seats at the outdoor venue, but less than half of the tickets for the seats were sold for the performance. However, an estimated 40,000 viewers that night watched the show from afar--and for free. The high cost of holding the concert and the unsold tickets resulted in a debt for New Aspect of more than NT$150 million (US$4.6 million).
The Kingdom of Desire, the first production by Taiwan's Contemporary Legend Theater, performed in London in 1990. (Courtesy of New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation)
Great Performances
Hsu, however, says that he was still encouraged because the show's popularity proved that the public desired to see great performances. "I remember talking to a cancer patient who had seen the concert," Hsu says. "He told me that watching the show had made his life worthwhile. He passed away one week after the performance. To get a response like that was enough for me."
Despite Hsu and Fan's achievements over the years, Hsu says he is still frustrated with the limited venues available in Taiwan for holding performances. "Sometimes an event we had been trying to plan for more than two years failed only because we couldn't find a suitable place to stage it," Hsu says, adding that over the past 20 years, Seoul, South Korea has added 42 performing arts centers, while in Taipei, only a handful have been built.
When Ju Tzong-Ching talks about New Aspect, he says he has personally learned a great amount from the performances the foundation has introduced to Taiwan over the years. Ju is the president of Taipei National University of Arts and the leader of the Ju Percussion Group. He recalls a series of the foundation's percussion performances that broadened his view on the music form. Examples Ju mentions include the 1986 performance by Canadian percussion quartet Repercussion, which showed him that percussion musicians could engage in close interaction with audience members, as well as the 1989 performance by the Toronto-based Glass Orchestra, which showed him that what he thought would be the harsh sound of striking--and breaking--"instruments" made of glass could instead be gentle and romantic.
Hsu and Fan have no intention of slowing down in their efforts to introduce diverse performing arts to Taiwan, something that art lovers around the island can be grateful for. As the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange's Wu Jing-jyi says, "New Aspect has brought to our doorstep performances that it would have cost a large amount of money to travel overseas to see."
Actor Chin Shih-chieh says New Aspect has served as a kind of Noah's Ark, carrying the hopes of a generation to an unknown but bright realm where people can experience the moving power of the arts. Hsu says he hopes the ark and the precious cargo it contains will continue to sail for another 30 years.
Write to Audrey Wang at tr.audrey@gmail.com