CLOUD GATE
DANCE THEATRE OF TAWIAN
Made possible through the generosity of López Love: Nance & Ramón José
NOVEMBER 14,7:30PM
LENSIC PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Blue Hour & Beckoning
This program brings together two foundational works by Artistic Director CHENG Tsung-lung, originally created for Cloud Gate 2 (now part of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan). Created during a pivotal period in his artistic development, the works make a transition in his choreographic language—from quiet self-reflection to movement inspired by Taiwanese temple processions.
About Blue Hour
Emotionally charged and deeply poetic. Taipei Times
Blue hour, translated from the French term “l’heure bleue,” refers to the fuzzy moment when day
and night are alternating and obscuring one another. Drawing his inspiration from the hazy blue
sky seen one morning in predawn darkness during his visit to New York, CHENG Tsung-lung
seeks to present intangible minds with conscious bodies in Blue Hour.
Six female dancers clad in elegant long black skirts, make intermittent and broken movements
by themselves as if they are making their own individual silent monologues. These bizarre
movements, set against the sound of rhythmic footsteps from the group dance and the lines that
segmented the space by long skirts, create an aesthetic sense of melancholy and agitation. Later,
immersing in the persistent and continuous solace music of cello and string orchestra by John
Tavener’s The Protecting Veil, dancers become restless and frantic and reveal traces of tranquility.
Artist Credit
Choreography CHENG Tsung-lung
Music John Tavener
Lighting Design SHEN Po-hung 2026 Restaging, SHEN Po-hung LIN Yi-chieh 2013 Premiere
Costume Design LIN Bing-hao
Premiere March 28, 2013 at Metropolitan Hall, Taipei, Taiwan
Dancers CHAN Pui-pui CHANG Pei-cheng FAN Chia-hsuan LIN Sin-yu
SHAO Hsing-wen YEN Hsueh-hsin
(in alphabetical order)
About Beckoning
A percussive score chisels out rhythms from their bodies. The Gaurdian
People can often turn into another identity in one instant. And I am fascinated by how these
changes occur on their bodies, expressions and tones,” said CHENG Tsung-lung.
Distilling movements subtly from the Taiwanese street-dancing ritual of the Eight Infernal
Generals, also known as Ba Jia Jiang, CHENG has created a mysterious zigzag of body language
that gives this abstract work a playful yet poetic quality.
Artist Credit
Choreography CHENG Tsung-lung
Music Composition CHUNG Cheng-da Quiet Quartet
Music Arrangement Blaire KO
Music Post-production Jamie HSU & Blaire Ko Studio
Lighting Design SHEN Po-hung
Stage Design HO Chia-hsing
Costume Design LIN Bing-hao
Premiere April 24, 2015 at Cloud Gate Theater, Tamsui, Taiwan
Dancers
CHANG Hung-mao CHANG Pei-cheng CHEN Chi-hsun
CHEN Lien-wei FAN Chia-hsuan HUANG Po-kai
LIN Sin-yu SHAO Hsing-wen WANG Chun-hung YEN Hsueh-hsin
in alphabetical order
CHENG TSUNG-LUNG
Artistic Director / Choreographer
From street hawker selling slippers to internationally recognized choreographer, CHENG Tsung-lung
succeeded LIN Hwai-min as Artistic Director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan starting in
2020.
CHENG took his first dance class at the age of 8. Upon graduation from the Dance Department at
Taipei National University of the Arts, he joined Cloud Gate in 2002 and became the Artistic Director
of Cloud Gate 2 in 2014.
CHENG has been awarded prestigious prizes for his choreography internationally as well as at home,
such as the No Ballet International Choreography Competition (Germany), the Premio Roma Danza
International Choreography Competition (Italy), the MASDANZA Choreography Competition
(Spain) and the Taishin Arts Award (Taiwan). He has also worked with companies worldwide,
including Sydney Dance Company, the Transitions Dance Company at the Laban Centre, London,
Expressions Dance Company, Brisbane, and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
CHENG’s choreography bridges Taiwan’s ancient rituals and modern life, blending local roots with
global influences and The Stage praised his “eye for a cinematic moment.” His 13 Tongues (2016)
evokes the vibrant streets of his childhood through folk dance and Taoist chant; Lunar Halo (2019),
set to music by Sigur Rós, was hailed by The Telegraph as “a luminously and bleakly beautiful take
on the internet-infested 21st century.” Sounding Light (2020) reflects the solitude of the pandemic
era; Send in a Cloud (2022) paints a poetic journey of life in shifting colors; WAVES (2023), co-
created with Japan’s digital artist Daito Manabe, explores the complex entanglement between
technology and humanity, and his most recent work, All Ears (2025) invites audiences to discover
movement through deep listening.
CHENG has been a fixture of Routledge’s respected annual survey of dance practitioners, Fifty
Contemporary Choreographers (2020), alongside the likes of William Forsythe, Akram Khan,
Hofesh Shechter, and leaders in the form.
SHEN Po-hung
Lighting Design Blue Hour & Beckoning
Graduating from the Graduate Institute of Drama and Theatre at National Taiwan University,
SHEN Po-hung has created his personal marks on lighting design through in-depth reading
into interdisciplinary fields. SHEN currently works as a freelance designer, and his designs
encompass works in dance, drama, concert, and special events. He has collaborated with
CHENG Tsung-lung for many years, with designing credits including All Ears (2025),
WAVES (2023), Send in a Cloud (2022), Lunar Halo (2019), Dream Catcher (2017), 13
Tongues (2016), Dorian Gray (2014), and On the Road (2011).
LIN Bing-hao
Costume Design Blue Hour & Beckoning
LIN Bing-hao started learning dance at the Taipei National University of the Arts. Later
discovering his true passion for costume design, he dropped out of school to serve as an
apprentice to the renowned designer LIN Ching-ju in 1998. In 2001, LIN opened his Costume
Shop, and soon in the next year launched Taiwan’s first professional brand of leotards,
KeithLink.
He has collaborated with important performing arts groups and artists in Taiwan, including
Cloud Gate 2, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Ju Percussion Group, and GuoGuang
Chinese Opera Company. Acclaimed by critics as a promising artist, in 2011, he was invited
to design for the opera La Dame aux Camélias
HO Chia-hsing
Stage Design Beckoning
An AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) member since 2017, HO Chia-hsing is nourished
in his artistic designs by the rich cultural atmosphere of Dadaocheng, an old city district in
Taipei.
HO established a graphic design studio called the “Timonium Lake” in 2006. In 2019, with
partners at work, he runs the “Monsoon Plasticizing Culture Work Team,” focusing on the
rapid changes in the design industries of Taiwan and East Asia. His team uses the calligraphic
line of traditional Chinese scripts as means to create modern designs. In collaboration with
artists in different fields, his team fuses local Taiwan culture with their spiritual nourishment
in their plastic arts and design works.
CHUNG Cheng-da
Music Composition Beckoning
Formerly the drummer for Kuan-tsu Music Pit and Labor Exchange Band, CHUNG Cheng-
da is now a percussion arranger for The Hohak Band. Raised in a musical family in Pingtung,
Taiwan, he is a self-taught musician whose practice extends beyond drums to keyboard, bass,
guitar, violin, and flute. He also developed a hybrid drum set that combines traditional bayin
percussion with Western jazz drums. With more than 20 years of professional experience,
CHUNG has performed across a wide spectrum of musical settings, from grassroots venues
to funeral processional bands. Through drumming, he continues to engage people from all
walks of life in a musical language marked by sincerity, contemporary sensibility, and an open
global rhythmic imagination.
Quiet Quartet
Music Composition Beckoning
Founded in 2012, Quiet Quartet is led by arranger HUANG Pei-yu and also features drummer
CHUNG Cheng-da, cellist KUNG Jen-hsin, and pipa musician LIANG Jia-ning. Bringing
together artists with deep and varied performance backgrounds, the ensemble is known for its
distinctive cross-genre approach to traditional and contemporary sound. Their music has been
featured in numerous documentary projects. Since its founding, the group has toured across
Taiwan and has regularly presented original concerts at major live houses in Taipei to warm
critical response.
Blaire KO
Music Arrangement Beckoning
Blaire KO has long been active in music composition and production. His work spans a wide
range of genres and forms, including concerts, television, film, theatre, and traditional
performance genres such as Peking opera, Kunqu opera, Taiwanese opera, and glove puppetry.
In recent years, he has devoted sustained attention to field research and the creative
transformation of traditional Taiwanese music and multilingual culture, while continuing to
expand the expressive possibilities of sound.
His work has received broad recognition, including Best Album Producer at the Golden
Melody Awards, Best Sound Effects at the Golden Bell Award. Internationally, he has been
awarded the French Diapason d’Or. His works have also been recognized by Eslite Music,
Taipei Times Best Album of the Year, and the Golden Melody Award for Best Band.
CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE OF TAIWAN
Cloud Gate is the name of the oldest known dance in China. Founded in 1973 by
choreographer LIN Hwai-min, Cloud Gate became the first contemporary dance company in
the Chinese-speaking community. In 2020, CHENG Tsung-lung succeeded LIN as Artistic
Director, bringing together a deep grounding in tradition with perspectives shaped by the
digital and globalized world. Cloud Gate celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023.
Drawing on classical, folk, and modern dance traditions from both Western and Asian cultures,
Cloud Gate engages closely with history, society, and lived experience. Its dancers are trained
in meditation, Qi Gong (an ancient breathing practice), internal martial arts, modern dance,
and ballet, with training further expanded under CHENG to include a wider range of
movement practices such as street dance. Through its choreography, the company transforms
ancient aesthetics into a contemporary language of movement.
Cloud Gate has toured extensively worldwide and earned international recognition as “Asia’s
leading contemporary dance theater” (The Times), and “one of the best dance companies in
the world” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). The company was also honored with the
“Outstanding Company” award at the 2018 UK National Dance Awards.
LIN HWAI-MIN
Founder
LIN Hwai-min founded Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan in 1973 and has led the company to
international prominence through his thrilling creations that transform Asian aesthetics into a
contemporary celebration of motion.
Among the honors LIN Hwai-min has received are the Samuel H. Scripps /American Dance Festival
Award for Lifetime Achievement; the John D. Rockefeller Award, New York; the Chevalier of the
Order of Arts and Letters, France; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Movimentos
International Dance Festival, Germany. He has also been celebrated by Time magazine as one of
“Asia’s Heroes”.
At the end of 2019, LIN Hwai-min stepped down as the Artistic Director of Cloud Gate and handed
the reins of the company to CHENG Tsung-lung.
WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT
CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE OF TAIWAN
Talent and skill require no translation… it’s only right that they should be shared with the rest of the world. —The New York Times
When you’re talking about Cloud Gate, magic is not too strong a word. —Time Out
One of the finest dance companies in the world. — The Globe and Mail
An extraordinarily exciting, brutishly physical contemporary dance company. — San Francisco Examiner
[The dancers] have such stringent, elastic control that they can suddenly blast upwards into high, light jumps that for a moment you fancy might not come down again. The grace of it is, in a way, balletic, but its evasion of the norms of gravity, its total fluidity, suggests that there is a new book of the human dancing body waiting to be written with t’ai chi training. —The Daily Telegraph
Dancers of the Cloud Gate possess a control and articulation that verge on the superhuman…In fact, they have the power to change your metabolism. —Chicago Sun-Times
What dancers! Their assurance, fluidity and discipline are simply breathtaking. The mixture of traditional Asian gesture, martial arts-inspired leaps, kicks and slaps and the audible breath of the dancers creates a mesmerizing language before our eyes. — Durham News & Observer
Cloud Gate leaves you sitting breathlessly on the edge of your chair. —San Jose Mercury News
This company gets to you. . . . A rousing standing ovation. —San Francisco Chronicle
This is a company that you will enjoy, fall in love with, and want to see again. —Ballet-Dance Magazine
So touching that one can not help crying . . . tears of joy – one’s heart nearly explodes from such a great theatrical experience. —Aftenposten
Wholly irresistible! —Dance News
Cloud Gate Culture and Arts Foundation
Chairman Stan SHIH
Board of Directors Henry C. T. HO, KUNG Shu-chang, Barry LAM, Alex LEE, LIN Hsin-ho,
LIN Hwai-min, Jamie Lin, Simon LIN, TSAI Hong-tu, TUNG T. H., Kate Huei-wen WEN, Eric YAO
in alphabetical order
Executive Director Kathy HONG
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Founder LIN Hwai-min
Artistic Director CHENG Tsung-lung
Associate Artistic Director LEE Ching-chun
Rehearsal Director YANG Ling-kai
Rehearsal Assistants HUANG Mei-ya WU Jui-ying YEH Po-sheng
Administrative Staff on Tour
Senior Project Manager CHUANG Ting-chi
Technical Staff on Tour
Production Director Richard LEE
Stage Manager CHEN Chia-ju
Lighting Supervisor TSENG Yen-min
Stage Supervisor KAO Tang-chieh
Wardrobe Supervisor HSU Wen-wen