The Lunar New Year is the most important period of the year for all Chinese speaking communities. After a long and exhausted season at the end of 2007, Cloud Gate members, like everyone else in Taiwan, were enjoying their last day of vacation and getting ready to resume work on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008. However, an accidental fire, caused by an electrical short-circuit, devastated the main rehearsal studio of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan in Bali, Taipei County on Monday, February 11th, 2008.
The fire broke out at the warehouse structure, made up with cargo containers, at around 2:30am. Firefighters quickly brought the blaze under control after an hour, but the interior of 661-square-meter (7,115-square-foot) main studio -- and the costumes, props, and scenery, lighting and office equipment, plus the immeasurable intellectual property, including music and production archive tracking back to 1975, inside -- was completed ruined.
The small studio (mainly used by Cloud Gate 2) and wardrobe room were luckily spared. However, the costumes for Lin's groundbreaking collaboration with the internationally renown Chinese visual artist Cai Guo-Qiang -- the work Wind Shadow, which will have its Guggenheim site-specific adaptation of Images from Wind Shadow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on April 3rd and overseas premiere at Pina Bausch's Internationales Tanzfestival in Wuppertal, Germany on November 22nd -- as well as those for Lin's work Moon Water, which is a production toured and well-received all over the world since its creation in 1998 and this year scheduled for a seven-week tour to Spain, U.K. (with a re-run in London) and Italy in April and May, were lost in the fire.
¡§The fire was a test from Buddha,¡¨ said Lin Hwai-min, the founder and artistic director of both Cloud Gate and Cloud Gate 2. ¡§Buddha must think that Cloud Gate is still very young at 35 and can tackle a new challenge. And, we are ready for it.¡¨
Many dancers rushed to the studio at 4am, after hearing about the fire, shocked and in tears. They could not believe that the home they had stayed for 16 years, where most of Lin's significant works -- Nine Songs, Songs of the Wanderers, Moon Water, Cursive trilogy, Wind Shadow and more -- were created, had disappeared. Afterwards, they wiped their tears and said, ¡§We are going to dance better than ever.¡¨
With the help of Taiwan government and various cultural institutions, Cloud Gate has found a temporary studio and started its classes and rehearsals the next day on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008; whereas, Cloud Gate 2 continues its works in the small studio that had survived from the fire.
Although all costumes have to be made immediately for both shows, and the props and video footage for projections used in Wind Shadow will also have to be recreated, the entire Cloud Gate organization -- both Cloud Gate and Cloud Gate 2 -- is determined and confident to deliver their 121 performances in Taiwan and overseas this year as planned, beginning with the launching of Cloud Gate 2's season at Novel Hall on March 26th with Lin Hwai-min's latest creation Song of Birds and works by Taiwanese emerging young choreographers, followed by Cloud Gate's eight-week international tour (see Cloud Gate 2008 touring schedule).