In the Imagination of Communities

Chun-Han Chen

Taiwan

What does it mean to know something by the same name when that very thing is constantly changing from within?

Throughout his life, the artist has continually encountered diverse forms of dance and embodied practices. Over time, memory, emotions, and body practices gradually accumulate, mix, and transform within body. In this work, a medium attempts to “summon the dances accumulated within his/her body.” As the audience watches, they are invited joining a game to recognize traces of body practices which are being called forth by the medium. Through this game, the artist invites audiences to reflect on how the ways we name and understand culture shape cultural identity, and how our sense of belonging becomes entangled in these very processes.

Choreograper, performer, sound designer: Chen, Chun-Han
Costume Designer: Chao, Tian-Cheng
Original Lighting Designer: Channel Huang

This choreography was developed with the support of Lais Creative Dance Theater’s “Solo Dance” Choreography Platform

Chun-Han Chen
Taiwan
Chen Chun-Han is an interdisciplinary artist working across theatre and dance. Through choreography, dramaturgy, and participatory performance, his practice investigates how cultural identities and forms of belonging emerge through embodied experience, memory, and discourse. Rather than treating identity as fixed, he approaches it as an ongoing process shaped through embodied practice and collective experience. His works have been supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Lai Tsui-Shuang Dance Theatre, and C-LAB, and presented at platforms including Want To Dance Festival, Asian Blue Sky Theatre Festival, and Nuit Blanche Taipei. By creating performative situations that invite dialogue and participation, his recent work asks how bodies, memories, and discourses continually shape one another, and how these processes give rise to new understandings of culture and community.

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