"My uncle was a missionary in China, and from him and my own reading I've accumulated a good deal of knowledge about things Chinese since I was a teenager," says Fr. Michelini, in Italian-accented Mandarin Chinese.
Fr. Michelini fell in love with Chinese culture and decided to follow in his uncle's footsteps and become a Catholic priest. By the time he took his vows, the communists had taken over the China mainland, so his destination became Taiwan. After arriving in Taiwan in 1964 under the sponsorship of the Camillian Society, Fr. Michelini spent two years in rural Hsinchu learning Mandarin. His evenings were taken up with visiting Chinese cultural performances such as opera and hand puppet shows, which he found to be fascinating.
When he first arrived in Taiwan, Fr. Michelini often asked himself what he would be able to accomplish in the days ahead. At that time, there were already a few churches and a hospital in Han built by the Camillian Order, which had arrived 12 years earlier. But there were few facilities for children and the youth. He reasoned that if they had more places for their activities, children would be less likely to turn bad.
"Chinese culture must take root amongst the young if it is to survive," he says. "People who learn to love their culture will also love their country and will be good people." This attitude fit in well with his own approach to missionary work, because he seldom tries to persuade people to adopt his beliefs: "Whether someone believes in my religion or not isn't important. For the younger generation, what really matters is how to be a good human being."
Some of Fr. Michelini's friends suggested that he organize various Chinese cultural activities for the young as a vehicle for missionary work. They were inspired by the example of the American Brigham Young basketball team, which often toured Taiwan and used the occasion to proselytize the crowd. Fr. Michelini took the suggestion and established the Lan Yang Dancers in 1966. He soon expanded the project into the "Lan Yang Youth Catholic Center" (LYCC).
"To initiate cultural activities in a place like Lotung seemed difficult two decades ago, when people's first priority was simply to survive," says Fr. Michelini. His interest and involvement with Chinese culture initially extended beyond folk dance to other forms, such as Chinese music. But the music courses in LYCC ended after a few years because many students left Lotung for college or the army. Even the folk dance operation was difficult to maintain. Enrollment was limited because parents and teachers were unenthusiastic about extracurricular activities, even though there was no tuition. "In the early years, I drove to pick up students and take them home as an inducement for them to come," Fr. Michelini says.
About a two-hour drive from Taipei, the two-story LYCC building stands among trees and green grass on a 15-acre field. Approaching the site, it might be possible to hear the sound of "Happy Birthday to You" coming from the children in the LYCC kindergarten. Some of them will become Lan Yang members. Hundreds of pupils take dance classes, but only 60 can become actual members of the troupe. It usually takes three to five years before anyone can qualify as a troupe member, but there are also other dance classes so that those who fail to make the troupe can keep on dancing.
Fr. Michelini loves nature and hopes that the dancers can be nurtured by it. He plants trees and vegetables and raises small animals for the children to enjoy. After dancing, the young girls can go swimming or just take a walk in the green fields accompanied by singing birds and tame deer.
The troupe has grown from 10-odd members, all of them girls from primary to senior high schools, aged from nine to 18. Lan Yang did not become an all-girl troupe by design. Boys just seem not to be very interested in dancing. They simply do not participate in extracurricular activities they think are "for girls" and that do not have a practical career application, such as the computer classes which they prefer.
"Dancing changes children's temperament within only a few months," says Fr. Michelini. He cites the example of a lovely little aboriginal girl, who was a "yeh hai-tzu" (wild child) when she first came. But now she has regular habits and practices after school and during the weekends like the other troupe members.
Though Lan Yang focuses on Chinese folk dance, there are other kinds of training, such as ballet. The drills also include some of the special postures and acrobatic skills used in Chinese opera be cause some of the Lan Yang dances are adapted from this art. Tuition is now about US$40 per month, and no fee is required for the frequent sessions for extra training. The troupe members have to take care of many things for themselves both on and off stage, such as washing their clothes, building and transporting stage property, and other work which would enable them to meet most of their own needs on foreign tours. This training turns out to be important, because the group's tours sometimes last as long as several months. "The more grown up ones help the younger ones, and we're all like one big family," says Fr. Michelini.
Because Chinese history reaches back for thousands of years, and because the country has a multiplicity of ethnic tribes (numbering 56 in all of China), folk dancers have a vast cultural treasure-house to dig into. Today, Lan Yang has around 20 instructors, including several choreographers, but in the early years, only a few staff people were available, and materials on the cultures of Chinese ethnic minority tribes were virtually unavailable. Lan Yang's locally-born choreographers and its dancers were total strangers to the ethnic minority cultures and their dances.
Four years ago, Lan Yang began inviting dancers from Hong Kong who used to work for state troupes on the mainland. Their choreographic help has made it possible for Lan Yang to add more Chinese folk dances and tribal dances to their repertoire. In the past two decades, Lan Yang has choreographed and staged around 100 dances, half of which were tribal dances of Chinese minorities. Examples are the "Garland" and the "Veils," two dances introduced by a Hong Kong choreographer. The former depicts the tenderness and charm of the Tai girls, with their beautiful floral designs; the latter depicts the melancholy of women in Sinkiang and their joy after release from restrictive traditional conventions of dress and behavior.
Among Lan Yang's best received dances is "Jumping over the Moon," a dance of the Miao tribe in southwestern China: young boys and girls sing and dance as they choose mates in the moonlight each lunar June 15th. "Meeting the Bride," depicts a traditional southern Chinese wedding and is an example of the troupe's approach to modern folk dance. Instead of stylizing the movements as in traditional dance, the troupe exhibits more realism and oftentimes caricatures the movements to make them more lively and interesting. For instance, the bearers of the bride's sedan chair evoke laughter because of the way they ascend and descend a hill. And the ensuing happy occasion starts with the groom's kicking at the bride's sedan chair and ends with the guests conferring their boisterous congratulations.
Looking at the international people-to-people mission of the Lan Yang company, Fr. Michelini observes: "Culture is another kind of language to make a nation or people known to the rest of the world in a natural way." He adds that it is easier to make Chinese culture accessible to foreign people if children and the youth are used as the channel of communication. The Lan Yang girls spend considerable time with foreigners because they often board with foreign families during their tours.
Fr. Michelini chose his motherland of Italy as the destination for Lan Yang's foreign debut in 1973. Since then, these "little ambassadors" of the ROC's cultural diplomacy, as Fr. Michelini describes them, have done 12 tours with a total of 692 performances staged in 23 countries. They have also been favored with six audiences with Popes Paul VI and John Paul II.
Since the ROC has no diplomatic ties with many of the countries they visited, some difficulties were expected. Occasionally, their visas were canceled or their permission to perform was suddenly revoked. Fortunately, Fr. Michelini's connection with the Catholic Church was very helpful when negotiating with foreign government officials or the police. "We've already weathered our period of hardship. Such problems are now infrequent because we've built friendship and a good reputation with the audiences and their governments," he says. After touring the northern part of Europe, Lan Yang's next destination will be East Europe.
During their 1989 tour to Spain for the Third World Folk Dance Festival in Majorca island, Lan Yang was given "The Most Popular Award" among the 54 groups from 28 countries competing in the contest. It was the first international festival in which an ROC dance troupe had ever participated. "It also paved the way for the ROC to host the Taipei Inter national Dance Festival in May 1990," says Fr. Michelini.
Lan Yang has been commissioned by the Council for Cultural Planning and Development of the Executive Yuan to organize the festival, which is to be held on May 21-29, 1990. "It's the first such international activity in Taipei, and dance troupes from 15 countries have already accepted the invitation, including groups from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Scotland, Italy, Greece, South Africa, Paraguay, and other areas," Fr. Michelini says. Lan Yang was entrusted with this great responsibility because of its experience and international contacts.
Den-Rain Lee, one of Fr. Michelini's close friends and Lan Yang's senior advisor, especially in administrative affairs, says: "You can tell how expensive it is to operate from the fact that the Hong Kong-made feather fans used in the dance 'River Waves and Dancing Shadows' cost US$400 each!" Lan Yang is a nonprofit organization, and its funding comes mainly from foreign contributions. At Christmas time, Fr. Michelini sequesters himself in his study, writing hundreds of letters to solicit contributions. "But it's getting harder and harder to convince people of our need because people are very impressed with Taiwan's economic success. They think that the need is greater and more urgent in other areas, such as Africa."
Michelini's concern for Chinese culture does not stop with preservation alone. "Culture shouldn't just be a matter of reviving the past," he says. Among the measures to develop it further is the program of sending students abroad for advanced study. LYCC has given scholarships to eight outstanding young people for overseas study, including dancing, language, stage hand operations, and Montessori teaching. The students are not only sent to the U.S.: Fr. Michelini wants the young people to go to Europe for ballet training, which is considered basic for all kinds of dancing. His foreign study program has proven to be farsighted and has paid dividends.
Lin Mei-hong—a Lan Yang dancer returns as a top choreographer.
Students returning from overseas study are becoming the sinews of the troupe. Four students have already re turned from Europe. Fr. Michelini points.at a picture on the wall of the first Lan Yang class. He indicates a little girl named Lin Mei-hong—one of the returnees from Europe and currently one of his top choreographers. Now 30, Lin has maintained her close connection with Lan Yang for two decades. She was a troupe member for 10 years, beginning when she was only 10 years old. She then won a scholarship to study classic ballet and modern dance in Italy and Germany for eight years, and has been a Lan Yang choreographer since last summer.
"What do people think of when someone brings up the subject of Chinese folk dances? Colored belts and feathered fan dances perhaps. But actually there is far more than that," Lin says. Her Western training and the back ground of Chinese folk dance complement each other and make her choreography more imaginative and original. "Modern choreography and stage movements are incorporated into our dances to rejuvenate the traditional themes," Lin points out.
One example of this is a three-minute dance drama for the 60th anniversary of Taiwan's Fu Jen Catholic University last year. Lin choreographed the Eucharist ceremony through Chinese dance movements and transformed the children's dancing into a beautiful religious tribute.
In addition to Lan Yang's annual stage presentation, an avalanche of invitations eventually began to flood in from people at home and abroad. The troupe was regularly booked solid, and less and less time was available for further training and schooling of the troupe members. Six years ago, Fr. Michelini finally asked for a loan of about US$1 million to establish the 22,000-square-foot Lan Yang Art Center in Taipei. At present, half of the troupe members came from the Lotung headquarters and the rest from the new center. Now the two groups can perform in turn, and the reduced schedule interferes less with regular dance drills and schooling.
Fun, but competitive—only a few dancers in the Lan Yang Youth Catholic Center will be selected for the 60-member troupe.
Because there are few other groups like Lan Yang in Taiwan, Fr. Michelini thinks that Lan Yang should work more, on research than on teaching. For example, he would like to see work done on collecting and collating videotapes of Chinese tribal and folk dances for use as teaching materials. "We record such dances performed at both slow and normal speeds, prefaced with an introduction to local conditions and customs," Fr. Michelini says. In addition, the troupe is producing a program called "The Leaping Tribes" for public TV.
Two and a half decades have passed since Fr. Michelini came to Taiwan, but his enthusiasm for Chinese culture is undiminished. Mapping out the troupe's future, he emphasizes the urgency of establishing an academy of arts of the European type. "The current art schools are intended for college students, but it's too late to start dancing or learning other arts at this age," he says.
He urges the establishment of pro grams that start in kindergarten or primary school and last through college. In this way, the students should be able to concentrate more on their majors. He also thinks that such a school should' focus on Chinese culture, not on the whole universe of the arts. If the project were carried opt, dancers like those at LYCC would not quit because of the pressure of school work, as some of them do now. His suggestions indicate a continuing concern both for his students and the survival of dance in Taiwan.
For his dedication to promoting international cultural exchanges, Fr. Michelini was presented with "The International Communications Award" by the Government Information Office in 1989. While the recognition has given the Lan Yang troupe even greater public visibility, it is the continued building of strong moral character and preservation of the dance tradition that rest upper most in Fr. Michelini's thoughts. Over 1,000 dancers have already been nurtured by Lan Yang since its inception, and at the same time, Fr. Michelini has become a middle-aged gentleman with wrinkles and gray hair. But the youth in his eyes and the spirit with which he pursues his projects indicate that hundreds of other children will benefit from his devotion to his calling in Taiwan. And people all over the world will benefit as Lan Yang's "little ambassadors" launch more foreign tours in the course of the ROC's expanded program of international cultural communication.