WEEKEND REVIEW : Dance : ‘Nine Songs’ an Epic Look at Cycles of Suffering

So many thematic complexities attend Lin Hwai-min’s “Nine Songs,” that it’s crucial, first off, to honor the sheer beauty of this full-evening 1993 modern dance epic, performed Friday by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Even before the curtain rises, ripples of light and sound coming from water in a lotus pond on the forestage create a refined yet sensual ambience. Derived from a lotus painting by Taiwanese artist Lin Yu-shan, sliding scenic panels designed by Ming Cho Lee expand the flowers and leaves into huge, lush nature symbols.

Forming apertures of many sizes and proportions, these panels sometimes telescope in to suggest a small door in a great palace, sometimes iris all the way out to reveal the immensity of a full moon.

Based on an ancient cycle of Chinese poems, “Nine Songs” evokes cycles of its own--of the day, of the year, of history--but focuses on cycles of suffering that began with man’s subjugation to natural forces and include modern political oppression as well.

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Parallel to the poems, Lin initially shows groups of people invoking nature-gods: deities of unlimited power and cruelty. In a brilliant showpiece for Wul Fang, for instance, the nearly naked masked God of the Clouds dances on the backs and shoulders of two young men, his freedom and magnificence creating an intolerable burden for them that he never acknowledges.

Later on, the names of Chinese martyrs accompany re-enactments of massacre: the wartime Japanese occupation of Taiwan, for example, when the condemned were led to execution with wicker baskets covering their faces. Or Feb. 28, 1947, when Taiwanese rebels against the new Nationalist Chinese government met their fates. Or Tien An Men Square, Beijing, 1989, when one man dared to face down a tank.

Although the martyrs’ names are Chinese, Lin widens his work’s context by incorporating music and movement idioms from many Asian cultures. Unfortunately, the decision often backfires: For starters, you can question his taste in using holy Tibetan Buddhist chant to accompany the gymnastic flailing of his sardonic “Gods of Fate” sequence. Yes, he has the right to hold nothing sacred, and you have the right to deplore the result.

Moreover, the dance forms Lin quotes are highly specific in their effects, making his generalized / impressionistic adaptations very tedious very soon. Whether the source is Javanese court ritual or Japanese butoh, he never gets inside what he duplicates. So the research and technique are what you watch and it isn’t enough.

Essentially a vehicle for male prowess, “Nine Songs” gives its largest female role, the Shamaness, movement clearly modeled on Martha Graham’s Medea in her classic “Cave of the Heart.” Of course, Graham never made a secret of the inspiration she found in Asian dance, so the deepest problem here isn’t Lin’s eclecticism but how seldom he seems truly inspired by what he borrows.

With its gorgeous lighting by Lin Keh-hua, plus a finale in which candles honoring the dead stretch halfway to the stars, “Nine Songs” represents one of the great dance-spectacles of the decade. But, for all the skill, devotion and beauty of the Cloud Gate cast, the dance expression at its core remains not merely feeble and derivative but fundamentally lifeless.