Cover ‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which will be staged in Hong Kong for the first time this month (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which will be staged in Hong Kong for the first time this month (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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Taiwan’s premier contemporary dance company Cloud Gate brings ‘Lunar Halo’ to Hong Kong this month, using choreography inspired by primal rituals to question humanity’s relationship with technology
Ancient rituals and advanced technology are usually seen as sitting at opposite ends of the timeline of human history. But that’s not the opinion of Cheng Tsung-lung, the artistic director of Taiwan’s renowned contemporary dance company Cloud Gate. Cheng, who, in 2020, was named in the most recent edition of the acclaimed anthology Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers—alongside the likes of William Forsythe and Akram Khan—is bringing the company’s visually arresting production Lunar Halo to Hong Kong. It will be staged at West Kowloon’s Xiqu Centre from July 10 to 12.
The 60-minute performance, which had its world premiere in Taiwan in 2019, is known for its daring, experimental choreography, which sees dancers move with raw, explosive energy through movements inspired by ancient rituals. But instead of caves or ancient forests surrounding the dancers, the set is made up of towering, futuristic LED panels. One of the recurring images projected onto the screens is a lunar halo—a luminous, silvery ring that appears around the moon which, in Chinese folklore, serves as a bad omen.
The dancers circle below this “atmospheric phenomenon”, representing how Cheng visualises human behaviour and our reliance on screens, represented in the piece by the LED panels. He tells Tatler that he sees technology as an overpowering “celestial” force, and argues that we are being swept along by a digital current that dictates our behaviour: our obsessive use of smartphones, our growing online presence that overtakes real interactions, and our overdependence on AI.
Above ‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which will be staged in Hong Kong for the first time this month (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which will be staged in Hong Kong for the first time this month (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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Cheng’s inspiration for borrowing a lunar phenomenon as the title and central subject for the performance was sparked while he was creating the choreography for Full Moon, a production for the Sydney Dance Company, in 2017. During his research into historical lunar mythology across cultures, he encountered a Chinese term: mao yueliang, which means “furry moon” in Mandarin—in other words, a lunar halo. Intrigued by its mystery, he dove into its cultural significance and found out that in traditional Chinese culture, the phenomenon is read as a warning sign that severe winds are about to rise, and that significant, usually ominous events are about to happen.
For Cheng, this concept of an impending wind felt deeply tied to contemporary society. The piece was conceived and constructed between 2017 and 2019; its core emerged from a personal late-night revelation. He was scrolling through social media videos, entirely controlled by the smartphone in his hand; hours slipped away, and when the sun finally rose, Cheng was stunned by his own physical paralysis; his entire body had remained utterly motionless through the night, save for a single swiping finger.
Above ‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which choreography is inspired by ritualistic movements (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which choreography is inspired by ritualistic movements (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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This experience of algorithmic addiction prompted him to question modern viewing habits. “We have not yet arrived at the age of cyborgs. Our bodies are still very ancient; they have not been plugged into an electrical socket yet. But the living conditions we face are changing incredibly fast,” he says. “Technology advances to reduce physical labour and ease our bodily burdens. And yet, we’re increasingly inseparable from it—it is as if we shared a symbiotic relationship with this ‘creature’.”
Inspired by this insight, Cheng envisioned a performance that placed massive tech on stage, including a seven-metre-tall screen that displays an immense figure descending from above. Rather than allowing the technology to swallow the human element, Cheng arranged the dancers in a single line across the stage floor, choreographing deeply instinctive, intuitive and animalistic movements.
“The dominating screen makes the real dancers look like a row of insects underneath,” Cheng says. “This deliberate placement may seem ominous at first, but at the same time, it doesn’t fully allow the technology to eclipse the dancers; it gives the audience room to define that shifting relationship for themselves”.
Above ‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which will be staged in Hong Kong for the first time this month (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate, which will be staged in Hong Kong for the first time this month (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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If the audience is reminded of dystopian sci-fi movies, that’s because that genre played a foundational role in shaping Cheng’s visual choices in Lunar Halo. The psychological framing of the tech-saturated dystopia is greatly influenced by the British anthology series Black Mirror, which he watched extensively during early rehearsal periods to dissect how new technology can mutate human behaviour.
He also draws direct parallels with cinematic masterpieces. The unforgettable opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a tribe of apes reacts to a mysterious black monolith descending from the sky with a primal, frantic frenzy, serves as a key inspiration for his staging. “That image of a prehistoric tribe encountering a cold, alien metal object really stuck with me,” Cheng says. “I want to capture that exact, sudden eruption of raw energy.”
Similarly, the visual language of Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 film Blade Runner 2049—where human intimacy is simulated by colossal, holographic projections in a cold, artificial landscape—directly informs his treatment of the colossal LED imagery. Cheng pits the cold, mechanical nature of the screens against the natural warmth of the human body in an artistic showdown, testing the limits of what a dancer can achieve on a stage.
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Above ‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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“We want this piece to emphasise the sheer importance of the human body in a world filled with digital gadgets. That is why we focus heavily on raw elements relating to the body—using close-ups of human features or deconstructing filmed body parts into abstract textures on screen.”
The performance culminates in a sequence featuring the Wulai Waterfall in his home city of Taipei, with footage of the natural torrent cascading down the screens. This serves as a conceptual warning, prompting the audience to consider whether future generations will only be able to experience the wonders of the natural world through a digital display.
Despite the threats and lifestyle changes technology brings, Cheng views its rapid evolution optimistically. “As AI takes over more of our analytical tasks, it becomes even more essential for us to pursue humanity,” he says. “AI is entirely rational. It can write beautifully affectionate words, but it doesn’t understand what love means.”
Above Cheng Tsung-lung, the artistic director of Cloud Gate, the Taiwanese dance company behind ‘Lunar Halo’ (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
Cheng Tsung-lung, the artistic director of Cloud Gate, the Taiwanese dance company behind ‘Lunar Halo’ (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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The production’s ethereal atmosphere is completed by a score created in collaboration with Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. A longtime follower of the band since their early days, Cheng was deeply moved by their musical textures, which he describes as “sounds from another planet”. For Lunar Halo, he travelled to Iceland to attend their music festival and propose the collaboration. Upon arrival, he went to hire a car, where the local agent advised him to always use both hands to open the vehicle’s doors; he warned that the intense Icelandic winds could shear the metal doors right off their hinges. “In that exact moment, I had this strong intuition that I had come to the right place,” Cheng recalls with a smile, “because Lunar Halo is a project that is all about a rising wind.” The resulting score also features traditional Asian percussion elements, such as gongs and cymbals, woven into the band’s signature soundscape.
Lunar Halo and its explosive choreography are a far cry from Cloud Gate’s famous grounded, still movements derived from martial arts and tai chi, which were developed by Cheng’s predecessor Lin Hwai-min—an arts educator, writer and dancer widely respected for promoting contemporary dance in Asia, who mentored Cheng while the latter was a dancer in the troupe.
Above ‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
‘Lunar Halo’ by Cloud Gate (Image: courtesy of Cloud Gate)
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When asked if he is concerned about moving away from Lin’s teaching and legacy that have been the foundation for Cloud Gate’s reputation since it was established in 1973, Cheng, who took over from Lin in 2020, sees innovation and identifying his dancers’ strengths as the key to his company’s future. He still mandates training sessions in traditional dance every week, but he also introduces street dance elements to expand his dancers’ movement vocabulary. “I like [observing] the physical possibilities of my dancers,” he says, explaining that he believes using and spotlighting what his dancers are good at will naturally take his company to the next level.
“I don’t dwell on my personal artistic legacy or the company’s permanent positioning,” Cheng says. The future of Cloud Gate, he believes, should be a balance of creating new work, preserving the tradition of performing for the public, and providing an open platform for a diverse selection of choreographers. “Instead, I focus on what our next creation will be. I try to listen closely to what the dancers’ bodies are telling me, whether they need a moment of quiet or are desperate to move. I let those physical cues guide my choreography wherever they take me—like a gust of wind.”
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Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
