2024-08-25 03:26:33
Mej has been learning circus arts since she was ten years old. When she left school as an adult, she discovered that although many women were studying circus, they were disappearing from the field. The clash with inequality led her to create a purely female production on the border of the new circus, contemporary dance and Chinese acrobatic tradition. Now the Taiwanese group is touring the world with her. She plays it in Prague at the Letní Letná festival until the end of August.
A figure in a long skirt sits with her legs spread with her back to the audience. He gradually pulls one red scarf after another from his crotch until he takes out a balloon. Unfortunately, it’s pink, so it continues. He removes more and more pieces of red fabric – until finally he feels the pale blue ball. She gently takes him in her arms and weeps with happiness. He carries the pink one behind his back so that no one can see it.
The scene comes from a new circus performance #since1994. The title refers to the fact that it stars six female performers under the age of 30, while the content refers to the inequalities faced by women in the arts and in Taiwanese society. “We are the first and only Taiwanese group that focuses purely on women’s circus and is also led by a woman,” says Mej, a member of Eye Catching Circus and the author of the production. In her home country, she also established a platform for women in the industry to offer them new ways and opportunities to make it in a male-dominated industry.
She has been thinking about gender issues since she was a student at the National Taiwan School of Performing Arts, where she attended from the age of ten until adulthood. And even then the teachers talked her into not dealing “only” with women’s topics. “Taiwanese people still find it marginal,” he explains. It is said to be very unusual for artists to express themselves at all on issues related to the position of women and men in society.
At the same time, the East Asian country is one of the most liberal in the region, and the situation regarding gender equality has improved significantly there in recent years. It is even ahead of the Czech Republic in many respects. In May of this year, Taiwan’s first female president completed her term, her current successor is seconded by the vice president, and from 2019 the island recognizes marriage for all.
However, social structures are still relatively patriarchal. Mej and her colleague Lan explain that mainstream society does not have much awareness of issues related to feminism and, above all, is not very used to discussing them. It is said that cultural tradition dictates to be silent in public, not to comment too much on the lives of others and not to talk about your own. It can easily happen that Taiwanese seem liberal on some issues, but in reality they are just not expressing an opinion.
However, according to the female performers, such an attitude also offers advantages. Taiwanese are not in the habit of slamming ideas they don’t know. “They’re actually quite open-minded. So if they’ve never heard of a women’s circus and they might not like the idea, they’ll give it a shot. And if they don’t like it, they’ll stand back and watch it develop rather than loudly condemned,” Lan explains the mentality there. On the other hand, this “culture of silence” leads to the fact that many problems remain unnamed and various invisible barriers are strengthened.
According to Mej and Lan, in the case of women, it mainly concerns appearance. “A woman should, above all, dress like a woman – have long hair, behave and dress feminine,” they paraphrase the general idea. How sharply Taiwanese society judges women based on appearance is illustrated by a case from the recent Olympics. There, boxer Lin Yu-ching faced similar criticism and slurs for being a man as her Algerian counterpart Iman Khalif.
None of them match the stereotypical images of women in appearance. Both were also banned from last year’s World Cup after allegedly failing DNA tests. But the International Olympic Committee no longer recognizes the World Boxing Association, led by the Russian Umar Kremlev, who organized the tournament, and no one has seen the results of the tests.
Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ching won gold in the category up to 57 kilograms in Paris. “But people support her more in spite of her appearance. They take it that she is our national representative, and that’s the way it is,” explains Lan.
The Eye Catching Circus troupe also deals with the question of whether a woman can be strong and not look feminine in the performance #since1994. In the final part, when the women perform acrobatic elements on a metal frame, Mej does push-ups, but even during this demanding exercise, she smiles convulsively, almost like Barbie.
The production #since1994 can be seen at Letní Letná throughout August. | Photo: František Ortmann
The motif of the doll, which is silent and serves to please the male eye, appears repeatedly in the work. One performer transforms into a plastic figure in a pink overall so convincingly that she hardly even blinks. Soon, however, she abandons the role of a good girl and begins to use her femininity more calculatedly, as a seductive femme fatale. He completes the seduction with an impressive artistic performance, when he lays on his back and spins a small table with his tiptoes above him in various creations.
Other classic circus skills such as juggling or working with rings also appear in #since1994. The five performers – the sixth member of the ensemble comes from a theater background and is non-binary – also brilliantly controls elements of acrobatics, gymnastics and dance, all with precise technique. The training that has been going on since early childhood can be seen on their bodies.
Mej explains that circus art, as taught at school, draws on the Chinese acrobatic tradition that is around two thousand years old. However, her own understanding of the new circus is largely based on the Western form of contemporary dance and physical theater. “I’m like a sponge, I absorb various influences. I draw from Chinese tradition and what I see on the Internet. Our conception of the new circus is also quite influenced by the dramaturgy of the Taiwanese National Theatre,” Mej enumerates.
Eye Catching Circus has already established itself in Taiwan, #since1994 is its most famous project. The group toured France and Great Britain with him, and the European tour ends in the Czech Republic, where it can be seen until September 1. Despite these achievements, Mej has to answer questions about her body, not her work, to Taiwanese journalists. “How do you keep in shape, eating only one apple a day?” paraphrases. “We still have a long way to go,” he sums up.
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In 2019, French artist Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga started Summer Summer when she crossed the Vltava river on a 350-meter long rope. | Video: Emma Smetana